SHAKING HANDS WITH 
ENGLAND 



CHARLES HANSON TOWNE 




Class ! 



Book ~~T~1 !Jg * 



Copyright!?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

CHARLES HANSON TOWNE 



SHAKING HANDS 
WITH ENGLAND 



BY 

CHARLES HANSON TOWNE 

AUTHOR OF "THE BALFOUR VISIT", ETC. 




NEW X5JT YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



$<>+» 



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Copyright, 1919, 
By George H. Doran Company 



Printed in the United States of America 

JAN 27 1919 

©CLA.5 1216 8 



VI* 



TO THE FRIENDS I MADE IN ENGLAND 

AND TO 

-LIEUTENANT CONINGSBY DAWSON 
OF THE FOURTH CANADIAN ARTILLERY 

I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/shakinghandswithOOtown 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Two chapters from this volume have appeared 
in McClure's Magazine; and the poem "The 
Hammers of the Clyde" was printed in the 
Glasgow Herald; "To England: 191 8," in the 
London News, and "The Unknown Dead," in 
the Saturday Evening Post. 



vii 



FOREWORD 

Since the great World War began, and the news- 
papers have been so thrilling, I often look back and 
wonder what we used to read. Is it possible, I say 
to myself, that the Thaw case could ever have held 
my interest? Did the gubernatorial election or the 
passage of the anti-horse-racing bill really absorb 
me? The mysterious disappearance of a girl from 
New York — is it possible that we breathlessly read 
the headlines of a morning — yes, and of an evening 
too — to see if she had been found, dead or alive? 

The world has indeed moved since those days; and 
I wonder if we can ever drop back into the era of 
locally sensational newspaper headings. Has our ap- 
petite for news become so whetted that never again 
will a single murder case hold our attention at the 
breakfast table? You remember Horace Walpole's 
remark that he could scarcely wait for his daily jour- 
nal, since news of fresh victories was literally brought 
in with the toast. How tame his day was, as com- 
pared with ours, and how little cereal he would have 
consumed had he been living now ! 

But just as we woke up one morning and found 
the world at war, so we woke to find it at peace ; and 

ix 



x FOREWORD 

as we adjusted ourselves to the tragedy — exactly as 
one adjusts himself to an invalid in the house — so 
we will fall back, through some fortunate process of 
nature, into the old ways now that the terror and 
pain and grief are over. Only, there will always, 
for this generation, be the War to talk of ; and the 
stories that come after the Great Peace will perhaps 
be the most absorbing of all: the little, intimate ex- 
periences of this man or that, cross sections of the 
tremendous drama that has engrossed while it has 
dismayed us all. 

I have made no attempt to keep an accurate diary 
in the following pages, preferring to give a general 
impression of what I saw in England, Scotland and 
France in the latter part of 191 8. I kept few notes, 
for I have never been one to go in for statistics. The 
human side of the struggle, its reactions on men and 
women I have met, has always interested me far 
more than a dull inventory of how many implements 
a certain factory turned out. 

To Lord Beaverbrook, of the British Ministry of 
Information, I wish to express my gratitude and 
heartfelt thanks for the unusual trip which he made 
possible. It was a privilege to be in England and to 
see, at first hand, all that she has accomplished. She 
will not speak her own praises ; therefore we on the 
other side of the world must tell of her wonder in 
the days when sorrow stood at her door. England 
the Magnificent — in that way I shall always think 
of her now. 



FOREWORD xi 

A recent editorial in the New York Evening Sun 
reads as follows: 

"It is recorded that of the 14,840 members of 
Cambridge University serving in the War, 2,382 
have been killed, 3,154 wounded and 2,871 are miss- 
ing or prisoners — a total casualty list of 8,407. 
This small item out of England's total serves well 
to bring home to us the frightful price the British 
have paid in their service in defence of the world's 
civilisation. Their total casualty list is over a mil- 
lion. 

"The War has also taken toll at home. The Brit- 
ish Medical Journal records that of 2,000,000 men 
examined only 36 per cent, were in good physical 
condition. Too little food, too much work, lack of 
comfort and amusements and the strain of the War 
brought this degeneration about. It will take years 
of peace to repair the damage. Let us never forget 
the debt the world owes to Great Britain." 

No, indeed, let us never forget! 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword ix 

To England: 191 8 . xvii 

I Getting Us Over 19 

II From Liverpool to London 30 

III When London Was in Darkness. ... 36 

IV Going North 50 

V The' Fleet 59 

VI Glasgow and the Clyde 69 

VII Old Winchester, and Our Camp . . . 79 

VIII How We Didn't Fly — and How We Did . 83 

To France: 1918 88 

IX In France 89 

X Hun Prisoners 99 

XI The Spirit of the French 105 

XII An Anglo-American Alliance .... 114 



xiii 



SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 



TO ENGLAND: 1918 

1 

O England, our England (not yours alone, but 

ours) ! 
England of the iron coast, rich meadowlands, and 

flowers, 
England that we loved indeed in those folded days 
When the glad world lay at peace beneath the sun's 

large gaze, 
England, now we come to you, seeing your red scars, 
Seeing you encircled by the awful hosts of Mars. 
Yet England, our England, undaunted still you 

stand! 
And England, dear England, we press your burning 

hand. 

II 

O England, brave England, the years have brought 

you these : 
Sorrow and War's mad alarms — undreamed-of 

tragedies, 
And griefs that try the souls of men and test the 

lion's brood; 
But England, firm England, you gave your youth and 

blood. 
In agate endurance, in largeness of the soul, 
O England, sad England, you keep your birthright 

whole. 
And we who come as pilgrims to this your stricken 

land, 
O England, our England, how well we understand! 

xvii 



SHAKING HANDS WITH 
ENGLAND 



GETTING US OVER 

IT was in August, 191 8, that I went over to 
shake hands with England. Our party num- 
bered thirteen; and although we boarded ship 
on a Friday, were convoyed at one time by thirteen 
vessels, and were exactly thirteen days on the ocean, 
we "got across," and did what we had set out to 
do. 

Never again can we be superstitious. This War 
has knocked many silly notions out of our heads; and 
after the trials of the submarine zone the ordinary 
perils of the sea are as nothing. 

I shall never forget that hot summer morning 
when we left the harbour in New York, going over to 
see what Great Britain had accomplished in this 
colossal grim business of War. Save for the fact 
that we went upon a numbered, rather than a named, 
steamer, and that we had to show all our papers at 
the pier, I would never have known that America 

19 



20 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

was fighting a powerful enemy. There were no 
friends to tell us good-bye, it is true ; but we had said 
our last words, as so often before, at home, and it 
did not seem strange to board the ship alone. 

But soon I found myself in a maze of soldiers. 
I had not known that we would have the luck to 
take a transport. There were only about three hun- 
dred first-class passengers on our boat; and of these, 
over fifty were nurses and about forty were Y. M. 
C. A. men. Every one was bent on a serious errand. 
We never missed the waving handkerchiefs at the 
dock; for soon we were to see thousands of hands 
upheld, signalling us good-bye. Our nearest convoy 
also carried troops, and as we sailed out into the 
river, a big balloon above us and several airplanes 
scouting over our heads, the boys on the neighbour- 
ing ship stood calling and waving to us. We were 
almost abreast, and in their brown khaki, packed on 
the decks as matches are packed in a box, they looked 
to me like an enormous brown honeycomb ; and the 
booming planes above us were the bees, now flying 
away on the summer air. 

In all, we had three thousand soldiers on this 
ship, and if Germany thought we were inefficient, she 
should have known that only a few hours before sail- 
ing the embarkation officer told me that we found 
ourselves thirty-eight men shy: that is, there was 
room for just that many more boys, and the nearest 
camp was telegraphed to send them so that we could 
go out with our full complement. There was no 



GETTING US OVER 21 

waste. Space was precious. We filled it. And do 
you think those lads complained because they were 
packed so tightly in? Not a bit of it. Hot? Well, 
yes. But whimper? Never. 

I talked to dozens, to scores of them, on the way 
over: lads from Idaho and Maine, Wyoming and 
Texas; boys with clear eyes and clean skins; boys 
with sweethearts and wives and children left behind; 
boys with German names, others with Russian and 
Italian names. Always they said but one thing — 
they were glad to be off on the Great Adventure; 
they were happy to do their little share to make the 
world a more decent place to live in. They took 
their discomforts in a spirit of youthful good-will. 
The food wasn't abundant, but it was good enough, 
and to cross the wide ocean when most of them had 
never been more than fifty miles from home until 
they went to their respective camps — that was the 
all-sufficient fact which made the whole thing worth 
while. It was too wonderful to be true. Most of 
them were inland lads, and the sound of the waves 
was a new music to their ears. 

Those first magical moonlight nights on deck — 
they would never forget them. Even our prairie 
boys were bewildered; for marvellous as the moon 
is to one who has seen her from the vast stretches 
of our wastelands, she is still more beautiful reflected 
again and again in the endless mirror of the sea. 

It was curious to see life-preservers all the time. 
The soldiers had to keep them on every moment, and 



n SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

we other passengers carried them about, laughingly 
calling them "the white man's burden," until we 
were well out of the American danger zone — that 
is, three days from shore. A feeling of relief comes 
over you when you find you can get your breakfast 
without showing a life-preserver as a meal-ticket. 
And it isn't nice to see little children of three and 
four playing in the lounge, wrapped up in an ugly 
canvas scaffolding. You begin to think deeply of 
Germany's many crimes. You recall the Arabic, the 
Sussex, the Tuscania, but most of all the Lusitania, 
and when you first get into your hermetically sealed 
stateroom you ponder on the Germany that has made 
the difficult process necessary. But you never say 
a word, you never see a face on which fear is visible ; 
but you wait for that early-morning hour when your 
steward goes out on deck and unseals your tiny port- 
hole. It is the happiest sound of the day. 

I confess without shame that before I sailed I had 
often said to myself that nothing — nothing in the 
world — would induce me to sleep in one of those 
stuffy rooms while U-boats prowled the seas below. 
My nerves would never stand the strain. Yet, so 
soon do we become accustomed to danger, that I took 
my clothes off that first night just as I do at home; 
and I have seldom slept more soundly. And every 
one else feels the same way. We were curiously un- 
afraid. A few people slept on deck, but only, I 
think, to get more air — not through any sense of 
terror. 



GETTING US OVER 23 

If Germany set out deliberately to make this world 
an uncomfortable place to live in — as of course she 
did— she succeeded. Is she proud of her mon- 
strous achievement? 

She made it impossible to smoke after dark out 
on deck. And of course every man resents that ! 
Each exit was guarded by a soldier with a gun and 
bayonet. Thick curtains, drawn like those in a con- 
fessional, made a square box of the doorway, and 
in front of this, in the dimly lit passage, stood the 
tall figure of the guard when twilight came. With a 
lighted cigarette, you passed him at your peril! For 
the spark could be seen two miles away through a 
periscope. How bright, therefore, the stars must 
be to a U-boat captain ! Yet I think his soul is not 
given to their contemplation or he would never be 
about his terrible business. One does not imagine 
murderers and thieves studying the serene heavens, 
despite Gilbert's witty lines about the "enterprising 
burglar." 

As we got farther from shore, and settled down 
to the daily routine and idleness of a long voyage, 
I could not help contrasting this trip to others I had 
made in the sadly distant days of peace. Then every 
one dressed for dinner, and champagne flowed, the 
saloon was filled with laughter, and the Captain's 
table was the much-sought place of honour. There 
were serious discussions of the latest light novel, 
which probably was a picture of Newport society; 
there were dances and concerts arranged, and there 



m SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

was probably an ambassador on board, an opera 
singer, a professional pianist, a celebrated actress, all 
going to Europe for a gay summer holiday, and all 
happy because of the jingling American dollars in 
their purses. They would come back in the autumn 
and make more. This summer they were going to 
Italy, next year perhaps they would u do" Norway 
and Sweden. And there was a romantic girl from 
Montana who wanted to walk through the Black 
Forest. 

What blacker forest the whole world was travel- 
ling through now! That very phrase, which here- 
tofore had seemed so beautifully fanciful, was now 
like a fearful stain, a symbol of all that was hideous 
and mean. 

To-day, on our voyage across the water, there is 
no happy holiday to think of in England or Bel- 
gium or France. The Captain's table — there isn't 
any. He is too busy to be seen. He is on his 
bridge, day and night. What is social intercourse 
now? And you see the Purser only at boat drill, 
perhaps. And an evening gown, an evening coat — 
they are unthinkable. No red wine flows; for all 
around you at table are young American officers, 
with faces like cameos. They are straight and tall 
and lithe, and they hobnob with our English cousins 
— brothers now in the great world struggle — and 
the contrast is not to their detriment. You are 
proud to be an American too. The English of- 
ficers are returning from the States where they have 



GETTING US OVER 25 

been helping us in our training camps for almost a 
year; and most of them love our invigorating cli- 
mate, our clever women, our hospitality. They tell 
you they hope to go back some day. Every other 
phrase is, "When this War's over I'll do so and so." 
If you made friends easily on shipboard in the 
pre-war period, you make them even more readily 
now. People who would not have interested you 
then, strangely interest you now. Every one has had 
an adventure, at least an experience, in the United 
States which gives him plenty to talk about. There 
is more background in our lives. The exchange of 
stories is limitless; and tea-time becomes a different 
function, followed always by a thrilling lecture. One 
speaker — an English University man — says: "We 
confess that we in England could not understand, in 
those first fearful days of 19 14, how America could 
remain neutral. Democracy was at stake. The 
gauntlet had been thrown down, the challenge given. 
We in England and France had to decide at once — 
it was not a matter of days; it was a matter of hours. 
In the twinkling of an eye we had to reach a decision 
between right and wrong. We had to follow an im- 
mediate impulse. It was a terrible responsibility. 
Then America, after waiting, after deliberating two 
and a half years, decided to come in with us. Your 
pregnant patience, we might have called it Thereby 
you vindicated forever our necessarily swift judg- 
ment. Thereby you will make history prove that 
you — and we — were right." 



26 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

We keep up our spirits, and we arrange enter- 
tainments as of old. But always they are for the 
soldiers, or for the nurses. And the debonair wit 
of other days is replaced by the man or woman who 
really has something to say, and whom the War has 
taught how to say it. "Out of the fulness of the 
heart, the mouth speaketh." If you were inarticulate 
four years ago, you suddenly find yourself a trained 
and fearless orator. I heard one woman speak who 
had never been able to speak in public before. She 
was magnificent. But she had looked on death in 
France and Mesopotamia; she had seen courageous 
deeds in Flanders and Italy; she had been torpedoed 
in the Mediterranean and left drifting in the sea, 
without a life-preserver, for three-quarters of an 
hour. The last thing she remembered was the sight 
of a hundred white faces on the surface of the water. 
No wonder she is articulate now! The old, hum- 
drum days — for her, they will never return. For 
life has new meanings. She filled our eyes with tears 
as the ship lunged through the darkness. If we 
went down — well, others, thousands of them, had 
gone too, and we would be as brave as they. We 
would not falter if the crisis came. 

And so the days and nights run by — with serious 
talks on our boat and that strangely beautiful com- 
panionship of our convoys, so that we do not realise 
that we are crossing the ocean at all. There is no 
loneliness. You recall in the old days how great 
an event it was to see a steamer? Yet now they are 



GETTING US OVER 27 

all around us, and the sea is like a wide river, or at 
most a gulf, and you simply cannot get the feeling of 
the Atlantic. For happily we strike no storms. In- 
stead, above us drifts another fleet — of cloud-boats 
— a vast argosy of silver and gold seems to be con- 
voying us too, and the sunsets come with bewildering 
flame, with streaks of magenta and purple and sap- 
phire pink. The west is banked with crimson sails 
and that great galleon of the sky bids us good night 
as it dips down the horizon line. The flags of heaven 
wave to us, celestial banners send out their signals, 
and seem to whisper that all is well. Yet under- 
neath us who knows what peril may be waiting? We 

are safe to-day. To-morrow ? 

I remember two soldiers who helped to make our 
voyage a delight. One played the piano, the other 
the violin. They had never been out of some little 
New Jersey village ; but now, with heads shaven in a 
most unmusicianlike way, until they looked like plush 
buttons, they found themselves on the high seas, in 
the first-class passengers' lounge, playing for us 
every evening. Their real gift got them out of their 
crowded quarters below, for which they must have 
been secretly glad, and they rattled off snatches of 
"Over There," "Keep the Home Fires Burning," 
"There's a Long, Long Trail A-winding," the In- 
termezzo from Cavalleria, and — of course! — "The 
Rosary." One of them sang; and while we ate our 
meals his plaintive little untrained voice told us of 
"The Sunshine of Her Smile." He, too, had found 



28 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

a means of expression — he who, during all his twenty 
summers, had probably never dared to sing away 
from home. 

And I remember Frank I on the lower deck, 

a lad from somewhere near Buffalo, silent at first, 
but soon voluble when he found that I really liked 
his honest face. He had wanted to marry a few 
days before he was drafted, "the sweetest little girl 
in the world" — and she was, for I saw a snapshot 
of her which he pulled from next his heart. But he 
didn't think it would be fair to her, and he was hur- 
ried off to a Southern camp. He had two regrets : 
that he was still single, and that he had so little edu- 
cation. "I'm a first-class private — that's as far as 
I can go, I guess." But I told him of great men who 
had been less than he at his age, and perhaps not 
nearly half so brave; one chopped timber, and read 
good books on his way out to do it. "If you'll lay 
the emphasis on 'first-class' and soft-pedal the 'pri- 
vate,' I bet you'll come back a Major, Frank." His 
blue eyes danced. "Do you really think so?" he 
said. And I have since learned that he was made a 
sergeant almost as soon as he reached France. 

The day comes when we are told to put our life- 
preservers on again, and boat drills begin in earnest. 
We are lined up every afternoon at four sharp, the 
roll is called, and it isn't well to fail to answer to 
your name. You learn the very seat in the boat 
where you will sit in case we are torpedoed, and some 
wag remarks that if the Boches were decent — which 



GETTING US OVER 29 

they are not — they'd hit us while we are at drill; it 
would be so very convenient for us. 

There is laughter even in the danger zone ; and it 
is that spirit of comedy in the face of peril that will 
make us the victors in the War. Grim, set jaws — 
I saw none. We were all as happy as children; but 
never for an instant, I think, did we forget the 
tragedy in the world, and the possibility of direct 
tragedy for us. Yet laughter was our sword. What 
was to be, was to be. 

But it didn't happen ; and the morning came when 
nine little destroyers, bright, sturdy greyhounds of 
the sea, popped out of the mist to meet us. And 
I've never been happier to see any human being. 
They trotted along beside our hulking ship, like 
panting dogs, and they seemed to say, "We'd like to 
see anybody try to touch our master !" 

Oh, we felt safe with them ! And then the big 
dirigibles came out too, and we were doubly pro- 
tected. The stern, beautiful Irish coast loomed out 
of the grey sea, and Scotland hailed us, and the Isle 
of Man, where there were a host of German pris- 
oners, winked at us; and soon the busy Liverpool 
quays welcomed us in most friendly fashion. 

We were safe at last. The bands on all the ships 
in the Mersey started playing, and American flags 
greeted us on all sides. Our boys cheered and sang. 
The journey was ended. The Great Adventure had 
begun. 

Yes, indeed, they got us over ! 



II 

FROM LIVERPOOL TO LONDON 

I HAVE never seen Liverpool except in the rain. 
It must be a delightful city when the sun 
shines over it; but in the mist it always looks 
to me like a sad, middle-aged woman hiding behind 
a veil. She will put out her hand and grasp yours 
when you land at her docks, but she won't let you 
see her face. And it rather irritates you, for you 
imagine that she must be somewhat good looking. 
Her sombre garb begins to get on your nerves; and 
if it weren't for that pearl at her throat — the 
Adelphi — you would run away immediately you had 
shaken hands. But the Adelphi atones for a multi- 
tude of faults — it is without doubt one of the finest 
hotels in Europe — and so you sit around for a meal 
or two before you begin your journey to the English 
metropolis. 

You go to the telephone booth, and find that while 
the service is not so regular, because it is war-time, 
it is, nevertheless, pretty good; and the neat little 
operator, or exchange, with whom, of course, you 
converse while waiting for your number, tells you 
that she has seven brothers at the Front. You say 

30 



FROM LIVERPOOL TO LONDON SI 

to yourself, u Is it possible?'* and you hardly dare 
ask if they are all still alive and safe. Your number 
is coming soon. Can you screw up your courage to 
ask this efficient young girl such a question? Sup- 
pose they are not all alive — what can you say to her? 
Something idiotic in the way of sympathy, and then 
rush into your booth. Would that be nice, or fair? 
This is your first morning in England in war-time, 
and you dread such a shock as, "No, sir; four of 
them were killed." So you say nothing more. And 
you never find out about those seven stalwart broth- 
ers ; but you go on hoping against hope all the way 
down to London, that after four years of danger 
they are still above the ground. 

As I have said, it was raining at Liverpool, and the 
weather didn't improve as we rushed through the 
country. But the English fields are lovely, even when 
they are wet ; and the little box-hedges twinkled with 
millions of diamonds upon them, as they took their 
irregular ways through the green pastures. Rural 
England is a colossal checkerboard, and here Nature 
plays her game beautifully, with never a false move. 
The smoke curls from many a chimney, and the hay- 
stacks, neat as loaves of sugar, stand with unbeliev- 
able precision far as the eye can reach. Once in a 
while you see one that has been cleverly sliced, ex- 
actly as a ham is sliced in a delicatessen shop. What 
monster knife accomplished the miracle, and 
wouldn't you like to see the operation? You won- 
der again who did it, as you speed on your way, for 



m SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

this country, in war-time, seems to contain no peo- 
ple. Only at the stations do you see anybody, and 
then they are mostly old people and children. Yet 
the fields are as tidy as ever, as carefully manicured 
and barbered as of old. "Who attends to them?" 
I kept asking myself. I was to learn later. 

I could wish that the awful American habit of 
ruining our landscape with advertising signs had 
never taken hold of the English. To see "Some- 
body's Pills" splashed over our own Connecticut or 
New York countryside, where we are rather accus- 
tomed to it, is bad enough ; but to find it in Cheshire, 
Warwickshire and Northampton is painful beyond 
words. It seems an anachronism for this staid and 
heavenly country to permit such gross modern leg- 
ends to dot the fields. I remember that long ago 
Mr. Bok, in America, started a campaign to do away 
with the fiendish practice. Why doesn't some enter- 
prising journalist like Lord Northcliffe do the same 
good work for England? We cut the thing down 
in the United States after it had grown to enormous 
proportions. It would be easy to nip it in the bud in 
England; for I am happy to say that there are still 
only a few such boards about. But why have any 
at all? The matter is scarcely one for argument. 

We reached London at dusk — the. same old 
crowded, bustling, thundering town, but now with 
uniforms everywhere. Uniforms! How long the 
tailors of the world must have been working during 
these recent years! What miles of thread, what 



FROM LIVERPOOL TO LONDON 33 

bushels of buttons must have been used ! How many 
nimble fingers must have stitched rigid seams, and 
how many adroit fittings must have been accom- 
plished ! The professional statistician has a glorious 
field here. He could remain happy for the rest of 
his days, brooding over how many times the spools 
of thread used would encircle the world. You see 
soldiers walking down the streets everywhere you 
turn. It is the hour of khaki and blue, and you feel 
a bit ashamed that you arc not wearing either colour. 
The pavements echo with the tread of thousands of 
booted feet; and then you think that if the tailors 
were rushed, how the shoemakers also had to hustle ! 
For never before were so many pairs of boots needed 
at one time. Priceless leather ! It has been in such 
demand that you cannot buy a travelling-bag now 
unless you pay double or triple the old price. But 
you don't mind, since leather is being utilised in the 
noble cause of making the road easy for the young 
men who go out to fight and die. 

It was still twilight when we reached our hotel. 
If I had dropped in from another planet, ignorant of 
our history here, I should never have guessed that 
the biggest war of all time was being fought. At 
dinner the scene was as gorgeous as of old. The 
women in the great dining-room, against a back- 
ground of golden mirrors and heavy silken curtains, 
were jewelled and coiffed in the latest fashion. Par- 
ties of two, four, six, eight, and even a dozen were 
all around us, and there was light laughter, the click 



34 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

of glasses, and the curl of cigarette smoke. Had I 
not known, I would have said that this was a scene 
in New York, just before we entered the War. 
There was not so much noise, it is true, and there 
was no deafening jazz band; but there were the 
same rose-coloured lights, the same perfume and 
sense of festivity. 

I must say that I was a trifle mystified. "How can 
this be?" I said. I had not dressed for dinner, as I 
had not thought it necessary. 

And then I learned from a British officer who was 
with me, that these women dressed so beautifully, 
and appeared so gay, simply because, at every table, 
they were trying to look and be their best for their 
husbands, or brothers, or sons, who were home from 
the trenches. The British officer does not necessarily 
wear his uniform when he is on leave ; so the many 
men in mufti deceived me. One might have assumed 
they were slackers, in their evening clothes ; yet they 
were fighters with a vengeance. Thus can we mis- 
judge our fellow men ! 

For a brief interval they were being given a 
glimpse of the London life they missed and craved; 
and the women were determined that they would do 
their part to make the evening lovely. After all, we 
would go mad if we brooded of the horrors of War 
every moment of the day. "And you must remem- 
ber," whispered Major A , who was with me, 

"that practically every woman in this room has lost 
gome one very dear to her since 19 14. She wants the 



FROM LIVERPOOL TO LONDON 35 

brother or son who is left to be as happy as possible 
now. She doesn't talk of her grief. But neither does 
she forget it. Oh, no! She hides it behind a mask 
of gaiety. And isn't that the saner way, after all?" 

I think it is. And as I looked around the room 
again, I saw it with new eyes. I saw it as the soldier 
dead would like to have had it for their comrades 
who were left. The last thing a dead fighting man 
wants is a trail of grief for him. And the first 
thing a weary officer, home on leave from France, 
wants, is a swift forgetting of shrapnel and machine- 
guns. His friends — both men and women — see that 
he gets it. 



in 

WHEN LONDON WAS IN DARKNESS 

I WENT out into the streets after dinner. I had 
heard of the hooded lights, the drawn cur- 
tains, the hush of this vast city after night- 
fall. For London was indeed in darkness ; yet never 
had London been so light — spiritually. 

One of my first recollections of the theatre is a 
melodrama called "The Lights o' London." I smiled 
now as I thought of that title. And a haunting 
little song of Le Gallienne's came to me as I stepped 
into Piccadilly: 

"O London, London, our delight, 
Great flower that blossoms but at night!" 

Alas ! that flower was shut now, as a morning-glory 
closes when evening comes, and only in the daylight 
was the town its old bright self. 

The taxis, which usurped the place of the romantic 
hansoms, scurried along like big beetles, seeming to 
find their way about without the slightest difficulty. 
The crowds were as great as ever, but the theatres 
began at 7 130 for the most part, for they had to 
close promptly at half-past ten. That was the hour 

36 



WHEN LONDON WAS IN DARKNESS 37 

when every light had to go out. There was no sup- 
per. Home was considered the best place in case of 
a Zeppelin raid. You didn't fancy the idea of being 
caught in the streets, with pieces of bursting shrap- 
nel apt to hit you in the head. And though there 
were frequent signs reading "Shelter during raid," 
you were not sure that you would be in the imme- 
diate vicinity of these refuges when the signal was 
given. 

London was amply protected against the deadly 
Zeppelin. I saw many of the anti-aircraft depots. 
They had been showing us how swiftly they could 
make ready for a raid, and we were deeply im- 
pressed with the efficiency and speed of the men. 

"When did you have your last attack?" I asked 
one agreeable soldier, who had been particularly kind 
in explaining things to me. 

He thought a moment. "Let me see, sir; it was 
at Whitsuntide, sir." 

But I never could let him know that I was still 
as ignorant as when I asked my question. So, ap- 
parently very wise, I answered: "Really? I thought 
it was at Michaelmas." 

As I walked through Regent Street, suddenly the 
black velvet of heaven was etched with two sharp, 
grey shafts of light. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth 
appeared, apparently from nowhere. You could not 
possibly trace the source of these beams, though of 
course you knew they came from the earth. They 



38 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

mingled and met, like geometrical diagrams, finally 
focussing in one tiny spot high above me. The hos- 
tile aircraft that could get away with these ghostly 
beacons literally combing the sky for them would 
have been lucky indeed. They seemed to penetrate 
to the very gates of heaven, like giant magic-lan- 
terns. No wonder the Zeps feared these lights that 
searched for them incessantly. I was told that after 
the last big raid, only one or two of the Boche 
machines got safely back; and since then they have 
not been so brave. It would have driven the Hun to 
distraction to see how indifferent the English people 
were to air-raids. They were scarcely spoken of all 
the time I was in London; and a certain officer told 
me, only because I asked him, that even during a 
raid itself every one sat calmly at dinner, or in the 
theatres, as if nothing at all were occurring. I know 
that is true, though I did not experience an air at- 
tack myself; for just as the French said, concerning 
anything unpleasant, "Cest la guerre," the English 
said, when the Zeps flew above their heads, "It's 
the Huns," and went on talking of happier things. 

On my second night in London I happened to dine 
at one of the better known restaurants with a young 
English officer who, slightly wounded, but now en- 
tirely recovered, was about to go back to the Front. 
To my surprise, the orchestra played Wagner; and 
I remembered how, just before I left New York, 
Wagner had been hissed in a motion-picture theatre. 



WHEN LONDON WAS IN DARKNESS 39 

"So you still tolerate German music?" I said. 

"Oh, yes. Why not?" he answered. "You see, 
it's this way with us. We know the Boche are rot- 
ters in this War ; but if, in the past, they have given 
the world anything that's beautiful, why not appro- 
priate it now? They've taken no end of things from 
us, you know!" 

But I reminded him of the great difference there 
was in hearing Wagner played in war-time by an 
English orchestra, and hearing him played in the 
United States by a German band. In one case it- 
was done for purely esthetic reasons; in the other, 
obviously for propaganda purposes. "Music hath 
charms" ;, and I confess that if I heard the Liebestodt 
long enough, I would come to feel more kindly and 
forgiving toward the Germans — exactly as they want 
you to feel. You would be apt to forget poisoned 
gas in the high ecstasies of Brahms or Schumann, and 
you would say to yourself that a people who had been 
capable of producing such men should hardly be 
judged on the basis of Von Tirpitz or Count Zeppe- 
lin, the Crown Prince or the Kaiser. You forget the 
latter group while you are under the spell of the 
former; and in America it is only when a sleek Muck 
bows his acknowledgments of your spontaneous ap- 
plause that you wake up to the fact that you have 
been duped. If the Germans played their own music 
while they asked us to feed them, I doubt if we could 
resist their appeal. 



40 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

We had given up our meat coupons, and the waiter 
was bringing our chicken when I noticed five young 
British officers approaching the next table. They, 
were as fine a looking lot of fellows as you would 
care to see, with profiles like those on Roman medal- 
lions. One of them was much shorter than the 
others ; and it was only when the party broke about 
the table that I saw why. He was in a wheel chair, 
and both his legs were gone. Yet the smile on his 
lips — I shall never forget it; and he was telling a 
funny story as he pushed his chair to his place, and 
making his friends roar with laughter. 

I turned away, sick at heart for him; and I am 
not ashamed to say that my eyes were moist. For 
all his future days would be spent in that chair — 
and he was so magnificently young and handsome. 
For a full minute my friend did not speak to me. 
Then he said (and remember that he himself was 
going back to the Front in a few days) : "Look here, 
old man, if you're going to feel that way about the 
first wounded fellow you see, your visit to London 
will be a sorry one. Fcr you'll see them by the 
thousands — you're bound to. And besides," he 
added, as he lifted his glass, "it's all in the game." 

And my friend may lose his legs, or an arm, or an 
eye. "It's all in the game." Did the Hun count on 
that spirit when he began this atrocious War, I won- 
der? 

There is another chap in London without legs, 
who lunches every day in a certain hotel. He has 



WHEN LONDON WAS IN DARKNESS 41 

a pal who fought with him in Flanders, but who was 
never even scratched. Promptly at one o'clock this 
pal carries the wounded man on his back through 
the crowded restaurant, and calmly and gently — as 
gently as a nurse would do it — dumps him into a 
chair. Then they laugh, and begin their meal; and 
there isn't a happier pair in all the great city. 

These men never refer to their misfortunes. In- 
deed, they rather smile at them. I met one boy 
who had a glass eye, and he wore a monocle over it 
so that it would look humorous. He would have 
been the last person in the world to want your pity. 
He'd had hard luck. Well, he'd make a jest of it. 
What did it matter, after all? He had his other 
eye. 

Never did I see a wounded lad coming toward me 
in the streets of London but I had a pang in my 
heart — such sturdy, clean-looking boys they were, 
and oh, so young to be hurt! But they would have 
told you they were only too glad to be alive, no mat- 
ter what their wounds were like. If an arm was 
gone, I always rejoiced when I perceived that, for- 
tunately, it was the left arm. 

I saw a boy scarcely nineteen, badly shot up, 
laughing his bandaged head off at a farce one after- 
noon; and I wished I had been the author of that 
play, Avery Hopwood, that I might make a soldier, 
even for so brief a time, forget his wounds and 
scars. 

One misty day I was riding on top of a 'bus, and 



42 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

when the conductorette came to get my fare, she 
leaned over the seat in front of mine, and kissed the 
wounded soldier who was sitting there. I was the 
only other passenger ; and, feeling that I would not 
understand, she said: "I hope you won't mind, sir. 
He's my husband, and I'm havin' him ride up and 
down with me on his Blighty. We want to see as 
much of each other as we can." 

And she smiled, as the English always smile at 
their own nobilities. You cannot beat a people like 
that. They simply will not be downed. 

They are the same people who go without sugar 
and butter and milk gladly; and in the theatres, at 
the revues, there were always jokes about rations; 
and the soldiers home on leave laughed as heartily 
as the civilians at any reference to a food shortage. 
On the programme there was printed a solemn notice 
about the possibility of an air raid, and what precau- 
tions should be taken ; but no one read it. The time 
had long since gone by for that. Every one just 
enjoyed the show. 

In Trafalgar Square you saw war bonds being 
sold; but how much more quietly than in America! 
The stolid British refusal to advertise themselves — 
even to themselves — obtained here. Some enterpris- 
ing person suggested the firing of guns every day at 
a given hour so that a crowd could be collected; but 
the plan never went through. "No," they said; "if 
we can't raise money except through such spectacular 
means, we won't raise it at all." So the loan took 



WHEN LONDON WAS IN DARKNESS 43 

place almost in silence, right in the heart of the big- 
gest city in the world ; and it went well. British con- 
ventions were maintained, but the shillings and 
pounds poured into the Government's coffers with 
no shouting to make them flow. Isn't that the better 
way, when all is said and done? 

On my third morning in London I received a note 
from an old friend who had left America for the 
Front early in 19 15. He was an Englishman who 
had lived so long with us that he had almost for- 
gotten that he had been born in England; but when 
the War came, the call of the old blood was too 
strong to resist. He is a writer ; and in the old days 
he and I used to sit in my rooms and talk books by 
the hour. Little did we dream that a conflict like 
this would come upon the world. I recognised his 
hand-writing at once, and wondered why he was in 

England. Could it be that But this is what I 

read: 

"I see that you are in town. I am wounded for 
the second time — in the head now — and I'm in the 
Prince of Wales Hospital. I'm lonesome. Could 
you, would you, come in and see me if you have a 
moment?" 

Could I, would I? A taxi brought me to the door 
in ten minutes, and I took my place in the long line 
that was waiting to be shown up to those quiet rooms 
— rooms that had held so much agony already, and 
had witnessed so many heart-breaking partings. Yet 
they had seen goodness and mercy too, in the quiet 



44 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

service of those wonderful women who devote their 
lives to nursing the sick. Perhaps my friend was not 
badly hurt. After all, he had been able to write me 
a letter. That was a good sign. And the other 
time he had almost lost his right arm. I remem- 
bered hearing about it; how he had told the doctors 
they couldn't cut it off, since he was an author, and 
never could dictate, anyhow, and simply couldn't 
learn to scribble with his left hand. And so he had 
his way, and the arm was saved. He might be quite 
as lucky now. 

He was on a narrow bed by the window — a for- 
lorn enough place — and his head was wrapped up 
with a turban effect. He was puffing a cigarette when 
I opened the door, and pretending to read a book 
while the other occupant of the small room — a leg 
case — was whispering to his best girl who had been 
there for hours. 

How glad he was to see me! He, too, had a 
visitor — even though it wasn't his best girl. The 
score in that pleasant, harmless little rivalry between 
patients was not evened up by my call; but after all, 
there was a credit on my friend's side, and his face 
beamed. He glanced at his companion as though 
to say, "I'm not so friendless as you imagined. I, 
also, know some one in London!" 

We had to whisper too; and he spoke of how 
strange it was to meet here, of all places, after four 
years of separation. What were the new books, and 
how did the Brevoort look? Were the girls on Fifth 



WHEN LONDON WAS IN DARKNESS 45 

Avenue just as pretty, and how did I like my new 
rooms, and the garden — oh, yes, he had heard of 
them through another friend, 'way off in the trenches. 
Were the latest plays any good, and was America 
feeling the War? How he would like to see the 
Times Book Review, and hear the gossip of the 
club, and loiter down Broadway, with a rabbit and 
a mug of ale at Brown's chop house with me after 
the show ! How well I was looking, and 

Not a word about himself or his wounds! I 
couldn't whisper my questions as fast as he; but I 
managed to get in an inquiry at last. 

"Oh, it's nothing," he said, and smiled. "I'll be 
operated on to-morrow, and out of here in a week. 
Look here, can't we have a week-end at Oxford? I'd 
love to show it to you." 

He remembered that I had never been there, and 
how I used to like to hear him tell of the days when 
he was a student in one of the loveliest places in Eng- 
land. 

There came a morning when he was out of the 
hospital, and he surprised me by driving up to my 
hotel, still bandaged, but debonair. I suggested 
luncheon at the Cheshire Cheese — a haunt that we 
both loved — and we drove there in the bright Septem- 
ber sunshine. I have seldom had a better meal; and 
we had made friends, after the soup, with two Eng- 
lish officers who shared our table. One of them had 
lost his leg, the other had been gassed; but the ale 
and the port were wonderful, and though the sun 



46 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

disappeared and a typical wet London afternoon set 
in, we did not care, for we were talking of the War 
and of deeds of daring, and nothing mattered save 
that we were there in London, happy for a time, no 
matter what the future held. If you get soldiers 
together who have seen service, I defy you to be 
bored. Dusk came on, and we went over to see the 
spot where Goldsmith sleeps in the Temple — that 
place that always thrills me. And because my friends, 
new and old, were all English and I was an Amer- 
ican, I had to show them the grave, for of course 
they had never taken the time to go there. 

"Here lies Oliver Goldsmith." 

Nothing else is on that tomb. What an epitaph! 
The rain descended, but we stood there, unmindful 
of it, with our hats off. And the organ in the chapel 
close at hand pealed out, and the high, pure voices of 
choir boys at practice came to us in the stormy twi- 
light. "Glory to God in the highest," they sang. 

Was it possible that only a few hundred miles 
away, cannon were roaring, guns were clamouring, 
and men were killing one another? What did life 
mean? Here were friendship and peace; a little way 
off were hatred and discord and alarm. 

"At any rate," I whispered, as I turned away to 
get a taxi down the Strand, "here lies Oliver Gold- 
smith." 

And my friend, Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson, of 



WHEN LONDON WAS IN DARKNESS 47 

the Fourth Canadian Artillery, said, "Yes, and how 
fortunate he is !" 

In bitter contrast to the men on leave who have 
a wonderful holiday of forgetting in London, was 
the fate of the boy who, knowing nobody in the 
great city, came over to spend his furlough alone. 
He was the type — and I am happy to say there were 
many of him — that could not be trapped and en- 
snared by the women of the streets. I heard of one 
lad who spent two dismal days by himself in a small 
hotel — the best he could afford — and then became 
homesick for the Front, and went hurriedly back. 
The noise of London was as nothing after the furi- 
ous bombardments to which he had so long been 
accustomed! He actually craved the companion- 
ship of his pals on the firing line. 

I had an English friend in America who enlisted in 
December, 19 14, giving up everything because he 
felt, as Dawson did, the tug at his heart for the 
mother country. He had lived so long with us that 
all his old associates in England had years ago dis- 
appeared. Indeed, he had come to think of him- 
self as an American, yet when he realised that the 
bulldog needed him, he took a ship and sailed back 
to the land of his birth. He was like a Canadian, an 
Australian, or a South African; and, as Kipling once 
said: 

"He knows naught of England who only England 
knows." 

Men have rushed from the uttermost ends of the 



48 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

earth to fight for Britain. He was one of them. 
It was not until December, 19 15, that he got his 
first leave; and of course he went to London. He 
happened to arrive on Christmas Eve. Every 
Tommy, every officer, was met by his girl or his 
sister or his wife ; but for him, there was no feminine 
face in all that happy crowd. Alone, he wandered 
up the Strand to the Savoy, where he ate a solitary 
dinner; and at ten o'clock he told me that he went 
solemnly to bed. 

Have you ever spent Christmas alone? And espe- 
cially in a great city? If not, you know nothing of 
this man's tragic solitude, with people swarming 
about him, with hurrying lovers going to some long- 
dreamed-of festival, and faces so lit with gladness 
as to be almost unearthly. He saw children and gay 
shoppers, and the clasped hands of man and wife 
in the ecstasy of Christmas companionship ; yet when 
he saw his own face in a mirror which he chanced 
to pass, only his sad eyes looked back at him. All 
his friends were three thousand miles away, with a 
wintry ocean between. All his thoughts were in some 
cozy lodgings in New York, where his books and his 
pictures were now being enjoyed by a stranger. And 
he dreamed of a house-party out in the country, with 
soft snow, many a lighted window-pane, a roaring 
fire, and friends, friends, friends. 

Bored to distraction, after four days and three 
desolate nights he crossed the channel for France. 
And when he got to his division, the men still there 



WHEN LONDON WAS IN DARKNESS 49 

thought he had gone mad. And he had — with lone- 
liness. 

Since then he has been badly wounded; and when 
I saw him he was honourably discharged from the 
service. He is one of the quiet heroes who never 
complained. He could fight furiously under shot 
and shell for England; but he could not bear to be 
lonely in her great heart. 

These are the people who made London light, 
even in her darkness. Their great souls reached out 
in the night, and a flame came to your own. They 
gleamed and shone; but because they were as true 
as the stars, and as steadfast, you took them for 
granted, as you grow to take for granted all beauti- 
ful things. But their combined wonder made a, 
glorious constellation; and London was never dark 
when they were there. 



GOING NORTH 

THE day we went North to see the Fleet, it 
seemed to me that some celestial housewife 
had come out and swept the skies. And the 
cleanliness of heaven was reflected in the happy 
fields. 

At a banquet on the previous evening I had heard 
some almost unbelievable statistics — which I cannot 
now remember — of the British farmer and his power 
to produce grain and beans in war-time. The island 
had become self-supporting almost over-night; and 
now, as I looked from my train window at the rich 
meadows and farms, as they rushed by, I was con- 
vinced that England would never starve, unless some 
visitation of the devil should occur — a famine, a pes- 
tilence, or the like. Never did a countryside look 
more prosperous. The earth seemed literally to 
smile at us; and the absence of human beings, of 
which I have already spoken, was the only flaw in the 
landscape. I had never realised before how much 
we miss people. I kept thinking of Goldsmith's "De- 
serted Village. " But if I was to feel sad here, I had 

50 



GOING NORTH 51 

tragedy waiting for my heart when I reached France. 
However, of that in its proper place. 

Who was cultivating these farms? Was it done 
by some good fairy at night, as in the old legends? 
By what process did these fields blossom like Aaron's 
rod? Did gnomes come out at dusk from yonder 
seemingly deserted thatched cottage, and hoe and 
till the soil? Had every one gone to the War, and 
did the magical earth simply decide of its own will 
to do its bit at home, so that full crops might await 
the returned soldier, back on leave? 

Question after question like this came to me; but 
I got no answers. I only knew that England was still 
radiantly lovely, despite the red holocaust of a War 
that had been going on for four long, terrible years. 
And I rejoiced in her abundance. But while it was 
pleasant to indulge my idle fancy, I was to learn 
later that no fairies performed the stern farm duties. 
This, as no one can deny who has lived during the 
past four years, is an age of frightful reality, an era 
of iron and steel and brass ; and the plowshare is as 
important as the gun. With every male of military 
age gone from England, the women took up the 
necessary labour to be done in the country ; but there 
weren't even enough of these who had been brought 
up in bucolic districts. Therefore, other women 
came to their rescue, young girls who had been gently 
bred in large towns and cities. They were eager 
and anxious to "carry on" at home; and they were 
doing so with remarkable success. They "hired 



m SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

out" for, say, ten shillings a day, and they became 
the most adept dairymaids in little or no time. Only, 
they had none of the romantic experience of Thomas 
Hardy's buxom girls, for there weren't, alas! any 
young men about to flirt with them. It was simply 
hard, cold duty every minute, for we all know with 
what sharp precision farm work must be done. On 
the tick of the clock the cows must be milked, and the 
hoeing and the threshing must be punctually accom- 
plished. How energetically these girls went about 
their business was an inspiration to me. I tell you 
they came nobly forward to England's assistance. 
And many of them, remember, used to be militant 
suffragettes, expressing themselves by smashing win- 
dows in London streets, or pouring a light explosive 
into mail-boxes. Perhaps they had to have an outlet 
for their emotions in pre-war times, or perhaps they 
were poor, hysterical beings, fit subjects for the path- 
ologist. I do not know ; but this I am sure of : it is 
far better to till the soil than to break glass, and it is 
nobler to be a 'bus conductor than a despoiler of 
the postal system. 

One noticed how many women were in uniform all 
over Great Britain. Not to wear one was to be con- 
spicuous. It was like a badge of service ; and every 
one wanted to serve. A girl was either a nurse, a 
policewoman, a farmer, a conductor, or a chauffeur. 
The latter were as good mechanics as ever the young 
men were. They could do any repair work neces- 
sary around a car, and I have seen them put on a 



GOING NORTH 53 

tire in a few moments. And they haven't lost their 
looks, either. On the contrary, I should say that 
every woman in uniform, like every man, looks twice 
as well as in civilian clothes ; and it may be, now that 
the War is over, women, remembering how well they 
appeared in their trim duds, will adopt some stand- 
ard form of dress, and thereby) practise a wise 
economy. Surely their soldier husbands, coming 
back almost penniless from France, would fall in 
heartily with such a scheme. Why can it not be 
done? The War is an excuse for many reforms. 
Let this be one of them. 

We pulled in at Carlisle just at sunset. Here, at 
last, there were people! For it happened to be a 
Saturday, and every one, seemingly, was out for Sun- 
day supplies. One saw rows of quaint shops, with 
plenty of red meat for sale; and when beef was not 
on view, shoes were. I had no idea there were so 
many feet in the world! And there was even a 
candy store, where, because I had had so little sugar 
for many days, I purchased some sweets — and 
mighty well worth buying they were. I think it was 
patriotic war candy — indeed, I know it was; for I 
took the word, as who would not, of the very pretty 
girl who waited upon me. Honey and syrup are 
just as good as sugar when it comes to bon-bons, and 
it is well that your throat, which does so much 
shouting in war-times, should live up to its preach- 
ing, and swallow only a patriot's food. 

There is a fine old cathedral in Carlisle, which 



54 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

has the distinction of being the church where Sir 
Walter Scott was married. Its tangled graveyard 
entranced us, and we could not help feeling glad that 
the Boche had seldom come so far north in their 
Zeppelins, to destroy this monument of the past. But 
of course the towns all through England and Scot- 
land were kept as dark, or darker, than London. 
Indeed, all during my journey I became so accus- 
tomed to darkness that to see New York again with 
its honeycomb of lighted windows was an adventure, 
and for one or two nights I wondered if we were 
not taking chances. Our splendid isolation has saved 
us from the horrors of air raids. Until you saw 
the precautions our British and French friends had 
to take, you never appreciated our good fortune. 

That night in Carlisle we went to bed early. 
There wasn't much else to do; for when a town is 
pitch dark after nightfall, you can't very well prowl 
the streets; and the one theatre closed its doors, of 
necessity, at ten-thirty. At midnight I was awak- 
ened by shouts in the street — our hotel was close to 
the railway station — and I got up, glad of any excite- 
ment in so quiet a place. 

Down at the depot American soldiers were pass- 
ing through, on their way to France. Somehow the 
women of Carlisle had learned beforehand that they 
would arrive at about this hour, and they had gone 
down to greet the train, and to fetch sandwiches and 
hot coffee and cigarettes. It did our hearts good to 
see the fuss that was made over our boys. How 



GOING NORTH 55 

happily their long journey was broken by this spon- 
taneous demonstration — and the English are not 
given to such signs of inner feeling. I hope the lads 
from the States appreciated this. At any rate, I 
know that they appreciated the food and smokes. 
They were profuse in their thanks, and they cried out 
that they would personally lay hands on the Kaiser. 
"We're after old Bill Hohenzollern !" some of them 
shouted; and I think that practically every lad who 
crossed the sea to fight in this War actually believed 
he would have something to do with capturing the 
German emperor and putting him where he be* 
longed ! 

People used to go to Gretna Green to see the old 
forge, and to revel in the recollection of all the ro- 
mantic marriages the village blacksmith performed 
long years ago. Gretna isn't far from Carlisle, and 
part of the tiny town lies in- Scotland; so runaway 
matches were popular there. Alas! it was not ro- 
mantic love that took one there in war-time ; it was 
stern, hard work. Three years or more ago it was 
decided to build a city of industry here ; and in the 
twinkling of an eye the plans were drawn, the streets 
were laid out, and girls and men trooped down from 
Scotland, and began the manufacture of munitions. 
It seems inconceivable that such a village could exist 
where previously there were nothing but lonely 
meadows and glades. There were permanent dwell- 
ing-places, the inevitable gardens, a sewage system, 
a police force (though this seemed hardly neces^ 



56 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

sary), a hospital, a cinema theatre and dance hall, 
churches, shops — in fact, everything that goes to 
make a small, bustling, hustling city. Here, as in the 
country, every foot of earth is utilised; and I recall 
the church-yard which was filled with cauliflower 
plants and turnip beds instead of tombstones. How 
much better, I thought, to ask the good ground to 
contain something living rather than something dead. 
And how much more beautiful it was ! Here is an 
idea for every town in America. Let us sensibly cre- 
mate our dead, and use the space heretofore given 
over to graveyards as gardens of the Lord, bright 
with green potato patches. I am sure we would all 
go to church oftener if we could have glimpses on the 
way of budding life instead of rows of depressing 
marble slabs. 

I heard my first real Scotch dialect at Gretna ; and 
the girls from up North who came down to help 
Great Britain in her factories, had the rosiest cheeks 
it has ever been my good fortune to see. The pale 
worker that we are familiar with seems to be un- 
known in England and Scotland. The young people 
looked as sound as apples. This may be a con- 
genital condition, or it may have been due, in part, 
to the splendid ventilating and lighting of the plants 
I visited. Nowhere did I ever encounter the sour- 
vizaged employe so frequently seen in my own 
country. That may be because every worker in Eng- 
land was a Britisher — a clean-cut boy or girl who, 
particularly in war-time, had a real reason for help- 



GOING NORTH 57 

ing in the factories. Fired and inspired by patriot- 
ism, they worked with tireless energy. It was their 
country that needed them ; and every nail they drove, 
every bolt they cut, every screw they turned, was just 
that much done for Great Britain. The service they 
so gladly rendered caused their faces to shine; and 
it is not too much to say that they reaped a spiritual 
reward which their eyes revealed. 

There was much dangerous work done in Gretna ; 
and yet I saw happy, smiling Scotch lassies walking 
about in shops with soft, protective fur shoes, as un- 
concerned as if they were going to do their shop- 
ping. And they had been doing this for over three 
years. If one fellow worker was the least bit care- 
less, if ,one rule was disobeyed, they might all be in 
eternity. But they went singing about their jobs, 
and when the noon whistle blew they went laughing 
to luncheon. 

And by the way, they were mighty well fed at 
Gretna. I saw plenty of roast beef and browned 
potatoes, bread and butter and cakes; and cleaner 
kitchens could not be found. The worker behind 
the lines, like the soldier at the Front, was well taken 
care of, as he should have been. The London civil- 
ian gladly went without his lump of sugar that some 
factory hand up North might have it. And no one 
lost caste by working in a shop. All classes bent their 
energies to the great task of winning the War, and 

you were as apt to see Lady , late of London 

drawing-rooms, at Machine No. 4, as you were to 



58 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

see Lizzie Mulligan. And they would both be 
dressed alike, and eat the same nourishing food, and 
turn in at night with the same healthily tired feeling, 
after a peep at the movies around the corner from 
their lodging place. 

While the factories were manufacturing bullets 
and shells, they were also turning out a new kind 
of democracy; and if the material which was put 
into one was as good as that which was put into the 
other, we need have no fears for the future. Labour 
has found out that the rich can work with a will; 
and the so-called aristocrat has made the joyful dis- 
covery that the so-called lower classes are as high 
and beautiful and noble as the stars. 



m 

THE FLEET, 

WHEN I woke ^up on a certain morning in 
Edinburgh and saw that a typical Scotch 
rain was falling, I fell back on my pillow 
with a feeling of disgust. For this was the day 
planned for us to see the Fleet; and if ever I had 
prayed for sunshine I had done it on the night be- 
fore. A bride never wanted a golden day more than 
I did; and I felt that the mist might have lifted for 
once, so that I could see the coast in all its splen- 
dour, our ships in all their wonder and glory. 

But it was not to be. I groaned through break- 
fast, scolded through most of the morning, and was 
on the point of getting a reputation for disagreeable- 
ness that would have made Xantippe's wife a saint 
by comparison. As a rule, I don't mind rain ; in fact, 
I love it, and I like nothing so much as to walk in it, 
properly dressed, without an umbrella, and feel its 
sharp patter on my face. I like the music of drip- 
ping eaves; and I revel in the sight of those slanting 
battalions coming over the hills, their bayonets shin- 
ing, their helmets gleaming. Rain is romantic, mar- 
tial, esthetically beautiful; and when it is accom- 

59 



60 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

panied by a cannonade of thunder, and illuminated by 
the calcium of lightning, it is the loveliest thing in na- 
ture, except calm summer moonlight. But to-day — : 
I loathed and abominated rain. And it was always 
raining in Scotland. And why couldn't the Fleet 
have been in some cheerier place? Why did one 
have to creep through miles of mist to catch a 
glimpse of what should have been one of the finest 
sights of the War? 

But when the little boat that took us up certain 
waters came closer to the object of our journey, I 
would not have changed the most brilliant day for 
this dismal one. For the effect was wonderful. You 
came upon that long line of dreadnaughts and bat- 
tleships so gradually that you were scarcely aware 
of their presence. At first, a bridge, which seemed 
almost as long and high as Brooklyn Bridge, hung 
above us, like a cobweb that had been spun in the 
night, so frail did it look. We passed silently under 
it, and out of the distance emerged the lines of what 
appeared to be a fairy shallop — a mere shell resting 
on the heaving tide. Vaguely, and by degrees, I saw 
outlines of other tenuous shallops, so hidden by the 
mist as to be barely visible. Could this be the Grand 
Fleet? Was this the famous British Navy, rein- 
forced now by our own, that was protecting the 
world, and keeping the vast seas safe? Could these 
fragile dreams be the reality I had read of? Surely 
this was nothing to be pitted against the wrath and 
strength of Germany. It was as if a butterfly, a grey 



THE FLEET 61 

moth, had to save us all from the doom of a meteor. 
I was miserably disappointed. 

But the line grew ; the mist held it only for a time, 
and then released its close embrace. I saw, as we 
came nearer and nearer, that what I had thought 
was star-dust and butterflies' wings was massive steel 
and iron, a Gibraltar of strength and endurance, a 
miracle of solid achievement. This was no light, 
airy, ephemeral stuff that would vanish while I 
looked, but heavy, massive boom and spar, thick 
masthead and giant beam, girt by guns that would 
chant a louder song than that of thunder, and roar a 
deafening chorus if ever they were challenged to 
open fire. 

It was as if a Colossus of Rhodes stood where a 
moment before a Lilliputian had been; as if, in one 
magic moment, I saw, in the place of the most deli- 
cate fern, the grey granite of innumerable sky- 
scrapers. 

A Fleet to be proud of ! Nay, two Fleets. For 
dozens of American battleships floated side by side 
with those of the British; and one felt again the 
wonder of the changes which this War has brought 
about. Here we were, together once more, forming 
another symbol of cemented friendship. Our bat- 
tleships rocked in the arms of the sea on the British 
coast, ready, at four hours' notice, for action; ready 
to plunge forth with their sister ships, and eager to 
help them fight the good fight. 

We got aboard one of our own big battleships. 



62 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

The sea was running high, and to climb up the rope 
ladder was no easy accomplishment; for the tur- 
bulent water is no respecter of individual legs, and 
we had to scramble fast or run the risk of falling. 

The decks were miraculously smooth and cream- 
white, and spick-and-span young officers stood on 
them to greet us and bid us welcome. We were, 
technically, on American soil the moment we stepped 
foot on those decks, and when you are three thou- 
sand miles or more from home, the thought brings 
you a curious comfort, a peculiar sense of gratifi- 
cation. 

Standing in the snug engine-room of a battleship 
is like being miraculously able to stand in the com- 
plicated works of a watch. What first strikes you is 
the compactness of it all, and you are awed by the 
genius which crowded so much detail into so little 
space. And then you think how terrible it would 
be for this fine network of machinery to be de- 
stroyed in the fraction of a second by an enemy tor- 
pedo. To achieve this marvel of construction, and 
then have it burst into a million different directions, 
seems almost too awful to contemplate. The pa- 
tience that went into this piecing together, far more 
wonderful than the mosaic-worker's pattern, is the 
patience not only of one brain, but of many. It is as 
if ten thousand spiders wove a monster web, only to 
have it ruined in an instant by one giant broom. 

To be ready for active service night and day means 
that every bit of machinery, down to the smallest 



THE FLEET 63 

detail, must be polished and oiled and tested, and 
every man must know the exact position he is to take, 
his own great or small responsibility. Life on board 
a ship like the one I saw is nothing but a perpetual 
dress rehearsal, with every officer and man aching 
for the curtain to go up on the real show. Can't 
you imagine how tedious it would be for a stock com- 
pany to go over their lines interminably, and never 
have a performance before an audience, with all the 
critics present? The boys on these ships feel 
cheated. The army gets into action, but the navy, 
constantly alert, must bide its time, with no let-up 
in the knowledge of one's cues. "If the Germans 
would only come out!" you heard the men wishing. 
"How we long for a little excitement!" 

You hear stories of heroism by the score — re- 
markable stories. Sir John Jellicoe it was who said 
that the British Navy would have to raise the stand- 
ard for courage every week, else every man in the 
Fleet would be decorated. 

This is literally true. I remember hearing of one 
young officer in the battle of Zeebrugge who had his 
arm severed by a shell. The nine men immediately 
around him were all killed ; yet the last thing a com- 
panion saw of him, he was waving his other arm in 
the air, as a sign of encouragement for his remain- 
ing men to come on. An incident like this becomes 
so common that the hero is not even decorated. 
They are all valiant lads, and they will not tell you 
of their deeds themselves. You have to learn them 



64 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

from other lips than theirs. If you draw a man out, 
by clever questioning, he invariably turns the conver- 
sation, and says nonchalantly, "Oh, we're only car- 
rying on." 

Once in a while you hear stories that the British 
and American army officers do not get along very 
well together; but if that is true in one branch of 
the service, it certainly is not true in another. The 
Navy is a place of lasting friendships. A cabin is 
a more homelike place than a dug-out, and it has a 
more permanent aspect; and when men visit one 
another in cozy rooms with swivel-chairs and sofas, 
book-shelves and shaded lamps, they somehow get 
better acquainted. I saw much cordiality displayed 
between our officers and the British. The deck of 
the battleship we were on had been the scene, the 
night before, of a gala performance, given in honour 
of the English, of "The Birth of a Nation." Two 
thousand men saw it; and to keep out the punctual 
Scotch rain, a huge canvas covering had been spread, 
with much pains ; for nothing was too much trouble 
for our boys. They wanted everything to be as com- 
fortable as possible for their visitors. On the Brit- 
ish battleship which we visited, we found a reciprocal 
warmth of feeling for our men. They couldn't seem 
to do enough for them. The whole impression was 
of a vast family of males eager and anxious to live 
in the closest harmony. 

After the War there is bound to be a solidifying 
of these bonds. Such friendships will not be forgot- 



THE FLEET 65 

ten, for they have not been formed in a day. It is 
for us to insist upon a league between the two great 
English-speaking nations, to join our hands forever, 
and to patrol the seas as one country, keeping them 
open and secure. How safe the world would feel 
with such a domination of the ocean, and with what 
serenity we could face the years to come ! 

When America entered the War, England gave 
many of her ships for food, and went on rations. 
The scare about a food shortage in the British Isles 
in 19 17 was due to the fact that the commerce of 
England had been diverted in order that ships might 
fetch over from the United States the staple prod- 
ucts necessary to feed our armies. When our sol- 
diers began to go to Europe, the convoy system was 
the solution of the submarine peril, and of the pro- 
tecting ships, 29 per cent were American vessels, less 
than 1 per cent were Italian, and 3 per cent French. 
The rest were British. This large percentage of 
British ships, so used, made inroads on England's 
regular and dependable service for herself; but she 
never murmured. She gladly contributed her big 
share to help destroy the U-boat menace. How well 
she succeeded, time has shown. 

Over and over, the praises of the British Navy 
have been sung, and we have been told of the glory 
of the Fleet, and how it has proved the salvation of 
civilisation. You do not have to see with your own 
eyes this stupendous line of ships in order to believe 
that this is so. But once you have seen it you never 



66 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

can doubt again the strength of the lion and her 
brood. The very names of England's battleships are 
words of iron, and merely to repeat them brings 
courage to the heart. They form a litany of endur- 
ance in time of trouble. You know them well: In- 
vincible, Indomitable, Inflexible, Indefatigable, Lion, 
Tiger, Valiant, Resolution, Revenge, Renown (now 
Redoubtable) , Repulse and Royal Sovereign. 

If language alone can thus give us fresh hope and 
firm belief in the power to win, how much more the 
steel ships themselves, when you have looked on 
them, make you utterly unafraid. 

Of course no one would ever think of leaving 
Edinburgh without seeking out Number 17 Heriot 
Row. It would be like going away from Paris with- 
out walking under the Arc de Triomphe, or not see- 
ing the Houses of Parliament in London. Robert 
Louis Stevenson is Edinburgh to many of us; and 
the house where he spent so much of his childhood 
brings back a flood of memories. 

Bo I took a cab one afternoon, and when I got to 
the plain little structure, one of many like it facing 
a park, the cabman waited for me to get out. When 
he heard no sound, no click of the door, he turned to 
see if I had dropped dead. Instead, he saw me gaz- 
ing, I suppose with a rapt expression, up at the win- 
dows. Another eccentric American, no doubt he 
thought; and he mercifully left me to my dreams. I 
concluded that he was that rare thing — a cabman 



THE FLEET 67 

with imagination, and I determined to fee him liber- 
ally later on. 

There was a tenant in No. 17, and therefore I 
could not go in; for what would a stranger have 
thought if I had ventured to ask to be allowed to 
view the room where R. L. S. had played? I won- 
dered how it felt to be living in the very house where 
there were so many sweet ghosts, surrounded day 
after day with so pleasant a fragrance. Yet one can- 
not forever be conscious of one's golden luck, any 
more than he can forever rhapsodise over the moon. 
So I suppose the present tenant of No. 17 occasion- 
ally goes below to luncheon, forgetful of the fact 
that R. L. S. was doubtless led down that same stair- 
case by the adoring Cummie. The ordinary func- 
tions of life have to go on, whether you breathe the 
haunted atmosphere of Heriot Row or the common- 
place air of East Thirtieth Street, New York. 

So I thought as I gazed up at the windows, and 
wished that a wistful face, with far-apart eyes, could 
look down on me. A little boy came toward me, 
whistling. I stopped him, and asked him if he knew 
who lived once in Number 17. No, he did not. 
"Have you ever heard of Robert Louis Stevenson?" 
I said. Yes, he had heard of him, vaguely. "Don't 
you know that once, when he was about as old as you, 
he lived here?" No; that was news to him. And 
with an indifferent glance at that house which looked 
just like all the others, he went whistling down the 
street. "What a funny man!" he probably thought. 



68 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

R. L. S. couldn't stand the hard Scottish climate, 
and went away to a sunnier land. I could not blame 
him, for I found myself pulling my coat more closely 
about me as I sat there in the cab ; and it was only 
September. He seemed to me a symbol of the power 
of the men of Britain who were at that moment 
fighting in France. Many of them, we said, were 
not strong enough to go through with so dreadful a 
War ; but they left their pens and brushes, their of- 
fices and universities, their games and gardens, and 
went forth to fight for their very existence. They 
could not be beaten. So R. L. S. fought a good 
fight; and, wracked with pain, tortured by an ill- 
ness that weighed his spirits down, he nevertheless 
refused to give up. 

Whether soldier or artist, that is the type of man 
Great Britain produces. What a host of them she 
has to her credit now ; and how they sprang up from 
quiet places — from Heriot Rows and Devonshire 
farms — to help her when the need came ! 



VI 

GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE 

WE were more fortunate in our weather at 
Glasgow, that city of frowning skies. But 
the sun came out when we arrived; as if to 
say, "I'll show you what I can do ! You have heard 
how I never show myself here. But look!" 

Well, we looked — and it was good. In fact, old 
Sol, because of his long retirement, was never in bet- 
ter form; and all the people in the Scotch capital 
were so surprised at his sudden beneficence that they 
turned out in droves to greet him. I thought at first 
that they were paying tribute to their American 
guests — but they scarcely were aware of our pre&- 
ence ! After all, Glasgow is a big town, and a busy 
one. ' What were a handful of editors to the inhabi- 
tants of so industrious a place? 

We went up the Clyde that morning, for we 
wanted to see how Britain was building her ships. 
As our small craft sailed along the placid river, we 
heard the thunder of thousands of busy hammers, 
and all about us were the giant frames that would 
soon be clothed in steel and iron, ready to fare forth 
on the seas. They reminded me of the great skele- 
tons of prehistoric animals you see in museums. Un- 

69 



70 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

couth and undraped they stood there, somewhat out 
of drawing, row after row of them, the result of 
days of planning and shaping. Every nail we heard 
driven into their sides was like an answer to the 
Hun's "Hymn of Hate." "How can they ever 
win," I thought, "with these hundreds of ships being 
so rapidly built?" The line seemed endless. Far 
as the eye could reach the enormous frameworks 
stretched, and I marvelled at the cargoes they could 
and would contain. 

Beneath the hulls we saw many young women 
working in overalls and jumpers, here again coming 
to the rescue of their country. They waved to us 
from the shore, dropping their work only long 
enough to do so, then busily resuming it. For every 
moment was precious; yet their human desire to sig- 
nal to us proved that they were all the better work- 
ers. Robust girls they were, the best in Scotland, 
and they laughed and sang as they hammered away. 
Their voices carried over the sleepy waters ; and the 
morning sunshine had evidently gone to their heads 
like wine. It was a day for diligence ; "one day out 
of all the years," you could almost say, for it had 
been raining, raining incessantly in Glasgow, we 
learned, and this cloudless sky was an event not soon 
to be forgotten. After all, when you work in the 
open air, you get to count on the weather, and it's a 
red-letter morning indeed when the sun was as bright 
as it was that day. 

I cannot say how many ships a month were being 



GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE 71 

turned out when I was in Glasgow; but the number 
must have been staggering, and if reports got over 
to Berlin, there might have been a panic. At this 
time it must be borne in mind that there were no 
rumours of peace, or an armistice, and even if there 
had been I doubt if there would have been a slacken- 
ing of effort in the shipyards. 

So impressive were the noisy hammers that, when 
I went to our hotel that afternoon, I wrote some 
verses which I later read at the Lord Mayor's din- 
ner. The Glasgow Herald printed them the next 
morning, and then — a terrible thing happened. All 
the workers went on strike ! Is it possible that the 
pen is mightier than the sword? In all modesty I 
give below the lines I wrote. I can only leave them 
to the mercy of my readers, and ask them to judge 
for themselves whether the shipyard workers did 
right or wrong ! 

THE HAMMERS OF THE CLYDE 

On lovely Scotland's quiet streams 

I sailed in olden days of joy; 
I built a fairy house of dreams 

When I was but a little boy. 

lost white days of shining peace! 
O happy time now sadly gone, 

The voice of Memory will not cease 
Though dogs of War rush madly on. 

1 think of hours that used to glide 
Like silver on the River Clyde. 



72 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

And now — a thunder greets my ears 

When in the bright September day 
I wander with my doubts and fears 

Where the Clyde's waters laugh and play: 
A thunder that is strangely sweet, 

A sound that stirs my troubled mind, 
Voices that sing and then repeat 

A great new anthem for mankind. 
"We are Great Britain's tongues!" with pride 
Roar the glad hammers of the Clyde. 

"We are her soul made vocal now, 

We build a new dream for the old; 
Louder and louder, hark! we vow 

To speak until War's tale is told. 
We shall not fail; we shall not cease 

Until proud ships are on the sea, 
And comes again the old soft peace 

In golden days that are to be. 
We speak, and cannot be denied!" 
Shout the wild hammers of the Clyde. 

And so they pound their glorious song, 

And so they sing the long day through, 
And Right shall triumph over Wrong, 

And the wise dream at last come true. 
No sweeter music have I heard 

By any rushing, flashing stream; 
Hushed is the light song of the bird 

For this enduring iron theme. 
"Let not the Hun our strength deride!" 
Shout the loud hammers of the Clyde. 



GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE 73 

O brave, blest voice! O sounding note, 

Heard thro' the far ends of the world, 
Like a brave challenge now you float; 

On the four winds your song is whirled. 
And who can doubt that you shall save 

A weary earth, long, long oppressed ? 
Sing, sing again, O blest and brave, 

Until the world is rocked to rest. 
"We shall not fail, nor be denied!" 
Answer the hammers of the Clyde. 

The factories in and around Glasgow were most 
impressive. On one side of the Clyde is a modern 
building, formerly run by a German manufacturer, 
and, when the War came, taken over by the Gov- 
ernment and now used to turn out airplane engines. 
The planes that contained these engines often pene- 
trated Boche territory, and dropped a bomb or two. 
Such are the ironies of War. 

You could walk through miles and miles of fac- 
tory aisles, seeing every kind of human endeavour, 
seeing an airplane grow from its plans and specifica- 
tions until it emerged whole and entire on the grass 
at the workroom door. You saw one man twisting 
a wire as thin as a hair, and down the aisle a girl in 
a mask spraying the wings of the machine with var- 
nish. From the first nut to the first flight did not 
seem a lengthy process; but that was only because 
everything was done systematically and quietly. It 
is curious to see an airplane loaded on a car for ship- 



74 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

ment — this thing that, completed, and with a man 
to guide it, can move so much more swiftly than any 
locomotive. Odd that it should have to be trans- 
ported just as eggs or grain are sent abroad. Icarus 
in a freight-car! There is an element of the ridicu- 
lous in the thought. Fancy loading eagles on steam- 
boats ! 

You look down a lane of workers, both men and 
women, and you admire their stern yet pleasant faces. 
How deftly they turn each bolt and screw, and how 
can they do it with such intense interest, when they 
have been standing at that same machine for so many 
long months! It is because they, like the soldiers, 
have enlisted, and while they have taken no formal 
oath, most of them feel that a mighty job is theirs, 
that they play no small share in the solemn business 
of winning the War. They do not say so ; but they 
feel it. When strikes occur, they are the result of 
an organised minority, working for selfish ends; 
and in Great Britain, while I was there, any strikes 
that occurred lasted an amazingly short time. If my 
verses above had anything to do with one brief 
period of laying off work, I must offer my most hum- 
ble apology to a Government that invited me to be 
merely a spectator of her industrial effort, and not a 
fomenter of strikes! 

After their long day's work is over, the artisan 
and the coal-heaver, the stenographer and the ma- 
chinist, need relaxation. They get it in all the pro- 



GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE 75 

vincial theatres. I never saw such enthusiastic au- 
diences anywhere as in places like Glasgow, Man- 
chester, and Birmingham. Patriotic songs — the 
cheaper, cruder kind, hastily written to win popular 
favour — got little applause, for the people were quick 
to detect the difference between "God Save the King" 
and a tin-pan bid for appeal, with some dour damsel 
draping herself in the flag, lugged in at the chorus. 
They had over four years of that, and they were 
blase. But the comedian who made them, no matter 
how briefly, forget the War, won instant approval, 
and they shrieked at his antics. It is a variation of 
the psychology of dining-out in the smart London 
hotels. You are not less a patriot because you long 
for a little anodyne against horror; you are a greater 
one through the very fact that you know you need 
relaxation to strengthen you for to-morrow's re-en- 
trance into your part of the battle. Whether that 
part is literally fighting at the Front or standing be- 
side a grinding machine in a munitions plant makes 
no difference. 

I loved nothing better than to see those big, appre- 
ciative audiences roaring their heads off at primitive 
buffoons; and when an American girl sang coon songs 
and they would not let her leave the stage, in 
one city, I rejoiced that she was so definitely doing 
her bit by bringing happiness to Britain's faithful 
labourers and soldiers behind the lines. 

And so it went in every manufacturing city 
throughout the Empire. Of course, when I was 



76 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

there, many young men were still at machines and 
benches, and these were either returned soldiers or 
men who had never been drafted because they were 
thought necessary in shop and mill. It would have 
been most inefficient to take skilled labour away from 
every branch of industry. England was quick to see 
this; and though, nine times out of ten^ the young 
lads kept behind complained bitterly because they 
were not permitted to go actually to the Front, they 
realised that a no less important duty was theirs at 
home ; and they stayed behind like the disciplined sol- 
diers they were. 

At Birmingham there were crowds of them; and 
at one shop, where a man in our party made a speech, 
I have never heard such applause. The boys and 
girls had gathered in a large empty room after the 
luncheon hour, and the tangle of machinery was 
hushed for a half hour in every part of the great 
buildings. The speaker told them how wonderful 
was their effort; that they were as valiant, in the eyes 
of the world, as the men in khaki and blue ; that their 
part was as essential as that of the men who pulled a 
trigger on the Ypres salient or loaded a Howitzer 
on the Somme. In fact, the latter, as was perfectly 
evident, couldn't fight at all if it were not for this job 
at home, so splendidly done. If I live to be a hun- 
dred, I can never forget the cheers of the women — a 
high, silver sound that thrilled one's blood and made 
one's heart miss a beat or two. Then came the boom 



GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE 77 

of the men's shouting, like organ tones after the 
sound of fifes. 

I am glad I have the memory of those enthusiastic 
voices; for whenever I walked through the clamour 
and din of a shop, and wanted to talk to a worker, I 
couldn't hear his or her reply. The machine was 
always marvellous; but it would have been nothing 
save for the human being who manipulated it; and 
I like the human note in everything. 

Manchester made me realise this more than ever; 
for under her dripping, sodden skies I was happy. 
It was because the people were so charming — a Lord 
Mayor with a keen sense of humour, and a dinner 
that, though simple, as all war dinners should be, 
went off with spirit and gusto. Who could miss sugar 
and butter in such company? What difference did 
it make to us that it was raining pitchforks; that it 
always did rain pitchforks in this outspreading manu- 
facturing city of over a million inhabitants? Like 
Liverpool, Manchester hears the incessant sob of 
storms and bows her solemn head over her tasks. 
Her slate roofs and chimney pots — there are aching 
miles of them — stare up at the grey heavens, and 
never seem to expect a glimpse of the sun. 

But on the night I got to Manchester I learned 
that Lloyd George was there. He had been speak- 
ing in the vicinity, and had been taken ill. We 
couldn't see him; yet the knowledge that he was in 
the same city with us gave me a thrill— "the thrill 
that comes once in a lifetime," as one of our Ameri- 



!78 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

can cartoonists says. I am not much of a hero wor- 
shipper, but the proximity of that great man, that 
great Statesman, whose flaming speeches I had read 
so many times; that little Welshman who had risen 
to be Great Britain's premier, plunging ahead where 
others might have hesitated — I was glad to be 
breathing the same atmosphere with him — even 
though that atmosphere wasn't all that it might have 
been! Like a refrain in a Rossetti ballad, "Lloyd 
George is here ! Lloyd George is here !" kept sing- 
ing in my foolish head. But of course he never knew. 
Why should he? We met him afterwards, in Lon- 
don, when he was grown well again; and it seemed 
strange that this man, so short of stature, could be 
carrying on his shoulders the burdens of Britain's 
vast problems. An armistice had been asked for 
by the Hun, and the little man at 10 Downing street, 
while confident that the War would be won, and won 
right, did not commit himself as to what would then 
immediately transpire. There was a twinkle in his 
eye, and his leonine head, with the well-known white 
hair just a little too long at the back, jerked itself 
higher when he spoke of his country's determination 
to carry the War through to the right conclusion. 

Since then the Kaiser has abdicated, and a new 
government will be established in Germany. How 
swiftly the world is moving, and how glorious it is 
to be living while such history is being made and 
written ! 



VII 
OLD WINCHESTER, AND OUR CAMP 

IN days of peace we all used to "do" the cathedral 
towns of Europe. No one who cared for Gothic 
architecture was ever known to omit Winchester 
■ — that historic little town in the south of England 
where kings were crowned in the far days of pomp 
and splendour and imperial purple. And Stonehenge 
is close by, with its ruins of Druid temples, almost up 
to the very worn and crumbling arches of which now 
creep — American camps! Such are the anachro- 
nisms one observes on a thrilling pilgrimage such as 
mine. 

In the stately cathedral, with its columns that lit- 
erally seem to reach to God, its quaint inscriptions on 
many an ancient grave, its perfect stained-glass win- 
dows, one looks around with reverent eyes ; but there 
is no lovelier sight in this hushed, old-world place 
of peace than the two flags that hang as one before 
the high altar. The Union Jack and the Stars and 
Stripes are draped majestically in the air, and they 
are arranged, either by a happy accident or by design 
— it really does not matter which — to fall so that 
they touch each other. I confess that when I saw 

79 



80 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

them thus, my religious ecstasy fell away from me 
to give place to a patriotic emotion such as I have 
only infrequently experienced. u At last," I whis- 
pered, "we are together. Pray God we may remain 
so! For we are one blood, one people, after all." 
And just then the organ played softly, as if to say 
"Amen" to my unexpected prayer. 

Not far from the silence and sanctity of the 
cathedral was a big bustling American camp, where 
it was my good fortune to lunch. A little while be- 
fore it had been nothing; now it was a town of sev- 
eral thousand busy inhabitants, with buildings that 
any architect might have been proud to design; with 
a hospital and every other necessity; all as clean as a 
ball-room floor, and as ready for a lively dance that 
used to be called the German. 

I always stand appalled and speechless and humble 
before machinery and army camps. They are two 
of the modern miracles that I cannot understand; 
and the efficiency that erects shacks and puts up tents 
in a night, where previously nothing had been, terri- 
fies me. The magic carpet of Bagdad is not more 
mysterious ; and this new world at Winchester stand- 
ing suddenly next to the old town itself, seemed to 
me a symbol of the greater bonds that are to be. 
What would the old dead kings have thought if they 
could have seen the astonishing achievement? 
What would Jane Austen, who once lived placidly 
in Winchester, and who wrote so beautifully of quiet 
towns, have thought of this newly awakened hive 



OLD WINCHESTER, AND OUR CAMP 81 

close by? There wasn't a village so remote in war 
days but that it did not suffer the possibility of sud- 
denly finding itself a teeming centre of affairs. An 
airdrome might make up its modern mind to settle 
down in your back yard; or some natty young Ameri- 
can officers might drive up the scented lane only a mile 
away and pitch a thousand tents in the twinkling of 
an eye. Drains and pipes might be plunged into the 
astonished ground, and an old apple-tree, that 
thought to live out its days in peace, find pegs ham- 
mered into it while whistling workmen sawed lumber 
for military huts. A cow might be serenely chewing 
its cud in a fine meadow this morning; to-morrow it 
finds itself transferred to a spot on the other side of 
town. For the foundations are being laid for a co- 
lossal training school, and pastoral content must 
make way for the feet of the young men. Where 
dandelions smiled last Sunday for Strephon and 
Chloe, who knows how many Lewis guns might be 
roaring on Wednesday? 

All over England it was so, as all over America, 
too. Only in England, because every foot of earth 
has been cultivated for years, the military camps were 
far more comfortable; and against a background of 
gentler living they came to reflect that background. 
You did not see the wide, deserted wastes around 
them that you saw, for instance, near a place like 
Yaphank or Wrightstown. There was grass at the 
door of the most hastily constructed hut; and ten 
to one there was a green hillslope to be seen from 



82 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

every man's rude window; and some one had planted 
phlox or hollyhocks at every other corner of the 
camp. One thing the English do more frequently 
than we : they make a garden, even if it's only a foot 
long and six inches wide, and when our boys went 
there to train, they imbibed this love of flowers and 
shrubs, and expressed themselves in terms of grow- 
ing things. You can't stay in England a week, and 
settle down, without wanting what every one else 
has — tea, and a tiny garden. They are part of the 
national life, as essential as air and rain. And if 
men could beautify their training quarters, is it not 
possible that they went to war with a heart more 
right? God knows there was plenty of mud and 
mire and filth before them. Let them snatch all the 
scraps of English beauty that they could before they 
threw themselves into the wrack of battle and the 
awful arms of Mars. 



VIII 

HOW WE DIDN'T FLY— AND HOW 
WE DID 

ONE night at a dinner in London I sat next to 
a Major in the Royal Flying Corps, and I 
told him of my desire to go up in an air- 
plane. We were about to be sent to France ; and to 
my joy he said he thought it could be arranged that 
those of our party who wished to do so could cross 
in a Handley-Paige machine. "But," he added, "you 
must know that there is an element of danger in it; 
for the Boche know that we have been taking over 
a few passengers, and — well, you never can tell what 
might happen. There is a war going on," he laughed. 

The spice of risk of course only made me all the 
more anxious to make the trip. Could anything be 
more romantic, I thought, than flying from England 
to France in war-time? Surely an adventure to re- 
member all one's days; something to think of and 
talk of for years to come. To think that I was liv- 
ing in such an age ! 

Moreover, I have always dreaded the usual Chan- 
nel crossing — as who has not? Never a good sailor, 
I abominate that short voyage on the heaving, 

83 



84 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

choppy waters ; and it seemed like getting the better 
of the Channel, winking at her, as it were, and then 
calmly and gloriously rising above her in the air and 
reaching the opposite shore without a trace of a 
splashing or a hint of mal de mer. 

So one morning I found myself rising with the 
cock and taking a train to Sandgate, a few miles from 
Folkstone. It was a wonderful morning — exactly 
made for air pilots and their enthusiastic passengers. 
Wine weather, you would have called it, with a 
sparkle in the atmosphere, no wind, and a sun that 
warmed your heart and blood. 

The little village reached out its arms to take 
us in ; and in less time than it takes to tell it we were 
wrapped in greatcoats, had put on goggles, life-pre- 
servers and thick gloves, and had distributed our- 
selves neatly in the enormous machine that was fas- 
tened to the earth waiting, as a fire horse waits and 
strains at its harness, for the signal to go. 

I had a feeling that I was about to embark on the 
greatest enterprise of my life, and a thrill ran up my 
spine at the thought of my good fortune. As I sat 
in the machine, I looked about me, determined that 
no least detail should escape me. I wanted to photo- 
graph on my brain, down to the minutest particle, 
everything around me. And so compact were my 
quarters that I felt like a prisoner in his tiny cell; 
and I said to myself that in the few moments before 
the trip began I would be acquainted with my sur- 
roundings as a man in jail is acquainted with every 



HOW WE DIDN'T— AND DID FLY, 85 

speck of masonry on his four walls. I wouldn't miss 
a detail. And so I can remember now the very curve 
of the canvas, the number of specks upon the side 
nearest me, the distance from the top of my head 
to what was the roof, the number of little wooden 
supports there were in my compartment, and such- 
like useless facts. A half hour must have gone by, 
but time was the only thing that took flight. I won- 
dered what was the matter. I heard mechanics and 
pilots walking on the smooth turf below me, and I 
could catch, now and then, a fragment of their talk. 
I gathered that there was an oil leak somewhere, but 
that it could be fixed in no time. I was patient and 
impatient by turns. Then a delightful Scotch Major 
poked his head through the floor and said it would 
take a full hour more to repair the slight damage, 
and hadn't we better get out and come and have 
some luncheon at the castle? 

It was high noon by now, and I thought of the 
meal that probably awaited us in France ; and fore- 
bodings came to me. Looking like a Polar explorer, 
and quite as undignified (for I could see the others, 
replicas of myself), I climbed down and toddled 
away, not to the Lord High Executioner, but to a 
heavenly luncheon in one of the most beautiful old 
castles in all England. 

Built in the eleventh century, its magic casements 
did indeed open on "perilous seas forlorn" ; and be- 
low the great room in which we sat, with a valley 
stretching far as the eye could reach, lay a garden 



86 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

where hollyhocks whispered to one another and the 
patches of grass had lately been properly barbered. 
Well, it was almost as wonderful to be lunching here, 
unexpectedly, as to be sitting round a table in France ; 
but as the meal went on I heard the ominous sound 
of the rising wind,, and my heart sank. Then the 
long-distance telephone rang, and we were told that, 
since the weather had suddenly changed, we were 
not to be allowed to fly. 

Ignominiously, then, we had to take motors to 
Folkstone, and meet the rest of our party who, not 
so adventurous as we, were taking the boat trip. 

But later on it was my good fortune to fly from 
Hendon, just outside London, in a De Haviland- 
Four. Beyond the clouds I went, on a bracing morn- 
ing; and there is but one word to express all one's 
concentrated emotions: ecstasy. I had a taste of 
the Immelmann turn, that gyrating movement which 
makes you feel like the water in a glass which a 
magician twirls in the air, the centrifugal force keep- 
ing it safely in. If I loved the little square patches 
of English landscape, seeing them from the earth, I 
doubly loved them when I saw them from my peril- 
ous height. Lakes and rivers look like little mir- 
rors, and the whole world is a toy garden such as 
your mother bought for you when you were a child. 
And the feeling of aloneness is beyond the power 
of words to express. You are one with the elements, 
and no wonder that those fine young poets of the air 
who scale, day after day to such unprecedented dis- 



HOW WE DIDN'T— AND DID FLY5 SH 

tances, have a look of wonder in their eyes, as if they 
had had visions which you and I have never had. 
The stars come to be their companions, and almost 
miraculously lean down to greet them at night; and 
the billowy clouds are their incessant comrades. 
Men, and the petty affairs of our quarrelsome world, 
grow trivial as one mounts to heaven. Even the War 
seems a little thing. There are no boundaries here, 
only space illimitable; and one has the sense of be- 
ing the rain, or the sunlight, or the voice in the wind. 
Mysterious detachment is yours, and in the hurrying 
flight, you wonder if you will be able to readjust 
yourself to mere existence on the solid earth. 

You never think of falling; and because there is 
no sheer declivity beneath you, as there is when you 
lean from a high parapet, you do not grow dizzy. 
You only drink in the wine-charged air, and abandon 
yourself to the glory around you; and when you 
pierce the first white cloud and ascend seemingly to 
God, your one hope is that this is not a dream. And 
when you slide back to earth, gradually and with the 
mathematical precision of a train entering a depot, 
you feel as if you had had a spiritual bath, and that 
your heart and soul have been purged of all con- 
tamination. 

Ecstasy ! That is what you have known. 



TO FRANCE: 1918 

How shall one come to France, save on one's knees ? 
O stricken land, we cannot pity you, 
For steadfast burned your lamp the long night 
through, 

As your sad face peered through the poplar trees. 

You never wept ! — one of Life's mysteries ; 

Yet how your heart did suffer ! O most true, 
Most faithful, and most beautiful, who knew 

Such pain, and livest still — you hold heaven's keys. 

We love you, we adore you ; yet no word 

Of pity shall cross the lips of us who come 
To look upon your face now you are dumb 

With sorrow for your cities long interred. 
O pity us instead ! Your high distress 
Lifts you to God, and Jeanne d' Arc's saintliness. 



IX 
IN FRANCE 

GETTING over to France in war-time in an 
airplane and getting over prosaically by way 
of the Channel are two very different things. 
Yet, arriving at night, as we did, and in a light rain, 
gave the adventure an added glamour. 

We knew we were going a number of miles from 
the coast to a certain chateau ; but we had no idea of 
the exact direction we would take. There was some- 
thing doubly sacred now about the very soil of 
France — a country that had been riddled so long by 
the shot and shell of the combat; and one's first 
glimpse of the women, in sombre black, sent a chill 
to our hearts. How they had suffered, and how in- 
terminably long the agony seemed to last! Under 
ghastly station lamps the sad eyes of these women 
looked even sadder, and I wondered how they could 
bear so much sorrow and still not weep. 

Our motors plunged through the darkness along a 
road smooth with the day's rain, and lined with the 
inevitable poplars. A chill wind blew in our faces, 
and we buttoned our coats a little tighter about us. 
There were no lights in the villages we passed 

89 



90 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

through, and if London had seemed dark, here in- 
deed was the blackness of a nether world. And it 
was so still! 

We had gone several miles when, far, far off, I 
distinctly heard the sound of a gun, and then another; 
and in some remote region of the sky I saw a vague 
flash. Then I knew that I was in the War, within 
sound of the monster cannon that shot to kill, and 
my spirit ached, as did my body, and I wondered 
again what Life meant. At that very moment some 
one — perhaps hundreds — were rushing toward 
Death ; and while the distant sound I had heard was 
only a sound to me, it was perhaps the voice of doom 
to some stricken soldier in No-Man's Land. I, in a 
comfortable motor, slipped quietly to a house of 
light, whilst he, in the rain-swept darkness, slipped 
to a house of death. It was too terrible to seem real. 
I could only hope that I was but dreaming; that I 
would waken and find the world War a nightmare. 

Warm candlelight awaited us, likewise the warm 
welcome of our British hosts. There was a roaring 
fire, and the sense of proximity to danger that lends 
such a flavour to any adventure. 

The next morning I saw a serene swan floating on 
the moat at our very elbow, dipping its head now and 
then in the cool waters, preening its feathers, and as 
unconscious of the troubles of this world as a rose in 
a shadowy garden. This swan, happily, knew nothing 
of the terrors of gas-masks and the tests one must 
go through before one can go forth to view the fiery 



IN FRANCE 91 

scene of action. Thrice fortunate bird! For 
promptly after breakfast we were put through a 
drill, and forced to go into a tiny room filled with 
sulphur, so that we would be sure that our masks 
would not fail us in an emergency. The prospect of 
alert e signs does not make you feel very comfortable ; 
and again you think how extraordinarily successful 
the Boches have been in making this world a miser- 
able place to live in. Wherever you turn you are con- 
fronted with discomforts ; and even now that the War 
is done, the seas are starred with mines that may ex- 
plode in years to come, when one's children are sail- 
ing on a summer holiday. 

As in the case of Great Britain, the French 
colonials had come to the rescue of the mother land; 
and on the road that first morning we saw many of 
them working with a will, turbaned in most pictur- 
esque fashion, swarthy of complexion, solemn-faced 
and alert-eyed. How the world had been bound to- 
gether by the conflict ! 

Here, too, as in England, we met few people. 
Motoring for pleasure was not, of course, indulged 
in, and only occassionally would a little farmer's cart, 
with probably a donkey drawing it, go by; or, rather, 
we would go by it with our flying car. This particu- 
lar section of the country had been untouched by the 
War, and so the fields were as green as ever, and the 
ancient tumbling hills, like petrified waves, lifted 
their beauty all around us. No wonder men call it 
La Belle France ! 



92 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

We had taken our lunch along with us, for there 
would be no inns, as we sadly knew, on the road we 
would reach about noon. For the devastated town 
of Albert was our destination — that place which had 
been torn by the ruthless Huns until no wall was left 
standing, no window-pane intact, no street with a 
name that could be read. For months, as all the 
world knows, the statue of the Virgin in front of the 
Cathedral hung suspended in mid-air, until she was 
tenderly taken down by the authorities, lest she 
should crumble on the ground. 

When I first stood among these ruins, I tell it 
without shame that I wept. How could this beautiful 
city be restored? Could I really be living and seeing 
this forlorn mass of wall and plaster ? All the photo- 
graphs I had seen, all the tales I had heard from the 
lips of friends back from this country, had never 
given me a picture of the utter sorrow of it all. Not 
that I had to see to believe ; for from the very mo- 
ment the Boches had entered Belgium I was con- 
vinced they were capable of anything; yet this was 
unbelievably awful, seen in the glowing light of high 
noon. O the pity of it ! I walked through what had 
once been quiet little curving streets, and here was 
a broken archway that must have led into the cure's 
garden. One poppy, through some miracle, lifted its 
satin hood from between two crumbling stones ; and I 
thought of long-gone peaceful twilights when there 
were other poppies in this place, and the priest had 
smoked his pipe behind the wall, never dreaming of 



IN FRANCE 93 

a time when he would be thrust from his serenity. 
What had he ever done — what had his village ever 
done, to deserve this punishment? I sought for an 
answer; but only the September wind blew over Al- 
bert and its waste of white stones. 

In front of the Cathedral I nibbled dejectedly at 
my mid-day sandwich, when around the turn came a 
young Canadian despatch-bearer, on foot, who hailed 
me in friendly fashion. He was out for a stroll, he 
said, and was glad to encounter any one — particu- 
larly some one who didn't wear a uniform. He had 
grown so sick, after four years, of the sight of khaki, 
he told me. His quarters were a few miles away, 
and he, was glad to get off his wheel and walk a bit. 
I found he was from Montreal ; and he told me that 
he had been married two hours before he sailed for 
France, and he had never been home on leave. He 
showed me his bride's picture — a charming young 
nurse, as pretty as she ought to have been for such a 
romantic story. He also had a bundle of clippings 
from home newspapers, giving sparkling accounts 
of his marriage. 

"I know she's true to me, and certainly I've been 
true to her," he said, with the utmost simplicity. 
"In the a N rmy, it's all up to the individual man. You 
can be as bad as you want to be, — or as good, if you 
want to put it that way," he added. 

I knew by his eyes that he was telling the truth. 
Yet they say that the army does awful things to our 
youth. Maybe it does — sometimes. 



94 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

In all these ruined towns you could see the dug- 
outs that the Boches had built, sometimes thirty and 
forty feet underground, the entrance on one street, 
and a secret exit on another, so that in case of a sur- 
prise attack, they could avoid being buried alive, and 
make their escape through a side door, as it were. 
There were staircases and row after row of bunks 
for the soldiers; and, as one Tommy told me (he 
was living in an abandoned dugout), "We never 
could teach the Germans anything about this sort of 
thing." Yes, they did it to perfection; and one of 
the mistakes of the War was in belittling forever the 
genius for certain enterprises which our enemy pos- 
sessed. 

In every devastated town we visited, the one im- 
perishable thing we saw were the Dubonnet and 
Chocolat Menier signs. Shells might shatter the 
walls of a Cathedral or a town hall, or the palace of 
the local aristocrat, but never by any chance did they 
seem to touch these advertisements. It would have 
gladdened the heart of an American manufacturer, 
for instance, to see the legend of his wares so miracu- 
lously saved. Some special providence must be work- 
ing to keep the world from prohibition ; else why, for- 
ever within my view, was this reminder of an 
aperitif that most of us like exceedingly? 

And then the Verboten signs! Everywhere the 
Boches had placed them the moment they occupied 
a village. You must not do this or that. It is ver- 
boten to sit on this wall, or to go down this road; 



IN FRANCE 95 

and the French, with their charming sense of humour, 
have left them nailed up, just as they found them 
whenever they recaptured a place. The German type 
did not seem to annoy them in the least. Perhaps, 
for years to come, they will allow these signs to re- 
main. They might surround them with board fences 
and charge admission from Cook's tourists who wish 
to see some relics of the War. A Yankee way of 
retrieving lost fortunes, but perhaps not so poor a 
scheme, after all. 

And speaking of signs, I saw a tragic one on a cer- 
tain afternoon. We had come, in our motors, to 
what looked to me like a lonely battlefield, filled with 
shell holes, an empty plain, with no sign of a habita- 
tion of any kind. There were a few helmets strewn 
on the ground, a few hand grenades that it might 
have been death to touch — nothing more. Suddenly, 
at a sharp turn of what once had been a good road, 
I saw this sign, written by an ironic soldier : 

"THIS WAS VILLERS CARBONNEL." 

That was on the road to Peronne, and I hope the 
French leave it there forever, as an eloquent memo- 
rial, an unforgettable reminder of what the Boches 
have done. 

I saw trees near this same spot, the leaves all gone 
from them, mere crooked sticks against the grey sky. 
There were rows of them, looking like nothing so 
much as scrawny hags with extended arms and dis- 



96 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

torted outlines. I asked the officer who was ac- 
companying us why the French did not cut them 
down. 

"They tried to do so," he answered, "but when 
they put their saws into the trunks, they immediately 
struck so much shrapnel and steel that the teeth of 
the saws broke ; and no axe could penetrate what was 
left of the bark. The job was so hopeless that they 
had to give it up." 

Some day, of course, when the people have time, 
they will burn these dead trees, or blow them up with 
dynamite ; but for the time being they also will have 
to remain, another reminder of the foul destruction 
of the Hun. 

Bapaume is another city that has been almost 
utterly wiped out. The cemetery is particularly a 
terrible place to visit. Here I saw a deep grave that 
had been opened by the Boche and used as a store 
place for shells ; and crucifixes had been demolished 
and headstones overturned, as if in a wild riot; yet 
here were the graves of many a young German officer 
whom the French had carefully buried in the past. 

French taste can never be questioned. I remember 
seeing three fresh graves side by side : the first con- 
tained all that was left of a French soldier, the sec- 
ond, a German, and the third, another Frenchman. 
On the two French graves there were heaped many 
flowers; yet on the centre mound a single rose had 
been placed. That rose will always remain in my 



IN FRANCE 97 

mind as an exquisite gesture. I wonder if in all Ger- 
many a similar case could be found? 

On one of the half-destroyed streets of Bapaume 
there was a little card on a door of what once had 
been the home of a dressmaker: 

"In Madame L 's absence, she may be found 

in the next street." 

Alas! there was no next street; and I thought of 

how many times the good Madame L must have 

walked around that corner. Where was she now? 
Indeed, I thought often of the vanished populace of 
these once happy towns. What a moment it must 
have been for them when they were told they must 
evacuate, taking with them what they could ! In an 
upper window of one house I saw a stuffed peacock, 
probably some one's priceless possession, but left 
behind in the rush, and now strangely intact. Shells 
had flown all around it. They had destroyed mir- 
rors and book-cases filled with rare old volumes, 
candlesticks and carved wood tables; but they had 
not even rumpled the feathers of the proud and use- 
less peacock, which lifted its head to the place where 
the roof had once been and stared with unseeing eyes 
at the blue sky. Behind the peacock was a lovely 
garden which also had remained unharmed. Here, 
as in the cure's garden in Albert, poppies bloomed, 
and there was also a riot of roses and long, tangled 
grass. A deserted garden is as sad a sight as any 



98 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

I know; for always memories are awakened, and you 
wonder what sweet spirit first conceived and then 
enjoyed its loveliness. The perfume of old days is 
here, and now and then a bird comes, as if looking 
for an old friend to feed it, and your heart almost 
breaks for the tiny creature that does not understand. 
But does he understand less than you? 



HUN PRISONERS 

I REMEMBER, some years before this War, 
playing a game of hearts with a German. He 
was not quite familiar with the game, and I ex- 
plained to him that one of the rules we always made 
was never to lead a low heart until the third hand 
round. 

"Why not?" he said — almost shouted. 

"Because it gives the player such an unfair ad- 
vantage," I explained. 

"Oh, rubbish !" he replied. "You have to play the 
low hearts sometime; why not take the advantage 
right away?" 

And I couldn't seem to make him understand. 
Looking back now, his refusal to see and obey this 
simple rule of ordinary politeness sums up the atti- 
tude of the Hun. Rules ? They acknowledge none 
— save those of their own making. It is "rubbish" 
to be decent to your adversary. Indeed, I have come 
to the conclusion, after seeing German prisoners in 
French and English camps and hospitals, that they 
rather look down upon an enemy who treats them 
well. If we could only have brought ourselves to 

90 



100 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

grind the Hun under our heel when we took him 
captive, he might have had some respect for us. As 
it is, I am afraid I think he has only contempt. 

When the War was going very badly for Fritz in 
October, 191 8, I got permission to speak to a prison- 
er in one of the ruined towns on the British front. 
He still thought the Fatherland would win, and he 
had the audacity to shrug his shoulders in scorn when 
I told him that was impossible. 

"Do you really want to see a German victory — 
after this?" I asked, indicating the devastation about 
us. 

"I certainly do," he replied. "Germany deserves 
to win." 

"But she cannot. Don't you know that America 
will have three million men in the field by next year?" 

His face turned a trifle paler. For the first time 
his arrogance disappeared. He had to admit that 
he knew nothing of the strength of the United States ; 
and when her power was made known to him, de- 
pression took the place of smug satisfaction. You 
see, the Hun has to be made to realise that force — 
"force to the utmost," as the President has said — 
will conquer him. No amount of argument or soft 
speech will turn away his stupid wrath. He must be 
vanquished by the sword, and by the sword alone. 
Like the bully he is, a whip hand is the only hand 
he respects. 

I saw many German prisoners in France and Eng- 
land. I never saw one who was really working. A 



HUN PRISONERS 101 

placid guard stood near them, always, and as we 
walked or drove by, every one, including the guard, 
followed us with his eyes. The labour — such as it 
was — was abandoned for the next ten minutes, or 
until we got out of sight. I was told that sentries 
often smoked cigarettes with their captives, and 
chatted with them. I saw one strapping German 
youth sound asleep on the top of a hay-wagon in 
France one balmy afternoon, as comfortable as 
though he were in a feather-bed, while his guard sat 
beneath on the hard ground, reading a newspaper. 
No wonder so many Huns are happy enough to be 
captured ! We treat them as though they were inno- 
cent children, not the beasts who cry "Kamerad!" 
and then seek to murder their unsuspecting enemy. 
And all this good treatment went on, while in the 
London Times appeared a series of articles telling 
of the vile manner in which the British soldiers in 
Germany were handled. Their packages from home 
were stolen, and they were jeered at when they asked 
for food. They were pricked with bayonets for the 
slightest failure to obey an order which they may not 
have understood. I was never for following any 
such wretched Hun example; but I do hold that it 
was a sign of weakness on our part to go on treating 
German prisoners of war as though they were house 
guests, when we knew how abominably the Prussian 
had behaved toward our helpless men. If Germany 
becomes a real democracy and sincerely repents of 



102 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

her many sins, there may be some forgiveness await- 
ing her. 

It is weakness, not strength, to forgive and for- 
get a great wrong too easily. I was glad to see the 
British acquiring some good old-fashioned hatred, 
and they acquired more of it before the conflict 
ended. It is as legitimate to hate evil as it is to love 
good; and for the life of me I never could under- 
stand the casuist who would go over the top with 
Pollyanna sweetness in his heart, feeling "glad" that 
things were no worse than they were. That isn't 
manhood. It is the stupidity of a jackass and a 
mollycoddle. 

All the Boche prisoners I saw- — even those cap- 
tured a day or two before I got a glimpse of them 
— were stalwart, husky fellows. Make no mistake 
about that. They evidently were not ill fed behind 
their own lines. They surrendered to the Allies in 
the pink of condition. Therefore, all the stories I 
had heard about old men and very young boys fight- 
ing for Germany as late as September, 191 8, were 
absolutely false. The Hun was still putting a fine 
lot of men into the trenches, and they were evil propa- 
gandists who tried to make us believe otherwise. 
Evidently there was some effort being made to give 
us the impression that Germany was on her last 
legs at that time, whereas her men were as strong a 
looking lot as ever. It was a miracle that she could 
continue so steadily to throw so much good material 



HUN PRISONERS 103 

into the War — clean-looking, phlegmatic creatures, 
anywhere from nineteen to thirty years old. 

I remember asking an English Colonel how he 
would feel about Germans after the War. He did 
not hesitate a moment. 

"Oh, I know very well. If, some time in the fu- 
ture, a Boche should be driving by my door in a 
motor, and the machine should break down, I'd take 
him some food, and a cup of cold water; but I'd 
never ask him to come under my roof. I couldn't, 
you know. They've never fought clean." 

That, if I know anything at all, is the point of 
view of a gentleman; of a human being. A race 
who cannot play fair cannot expect a fair deal. Do 
you ask a card sharp into your club? I hold that thd 
Hun has cheated at the game which he, like all dis- 
honest players, proposed. He got us in, and then 
he pulled his tricks. So perhaps he will find that 
there isn't any club now of which he can become a 
member. 

You hear a lot about reprisals. Dr. Albert Shaw, 
of our party, thought every German prisoner should 
be forced to remain in France and Belgium, and re- 
build with his own hands the towns he had helped 
to despoil. If you broke a window in your boyhood 
you were probably told, as I was, to find a glazier to 
repair the damage, and pay him out of your own 
pocket money. That is poetic justice. One of the 
first terms of our peace conditions should embody 
Dr. Shaw's sensible idea. It would be a fearful pun- 



104 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

ishment for the Hun to stare, day after day, on the 
ruins of French cities, and to carry away, on his own 
back, the broken stones and pillars his armies had de- 
molished. 

Stephen Phillips wrote a fine poem when Rheims 
Cathedral was destroyed, in which he said that it 
should never be rebuilt; forever, rather, let it remain 
as a broken monument to the wickedness that laid 
its splendour low. Could any greater punishment be 
devised? Posterity would look, with blanched face, 
upon this almost unbelievable destruction. The ages 
would pass, and the word "Hun" would be a syno- 
nym for all that is beastliest. 



XI 

THE SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH 

JUST as the British could not be downed, the 
French also remained calm under their terrible 
afflictions. Town after town was wiped out 
by the devastating Boche, but the world heard no cry 
from France. She nerved herself for the ordeal that 
Fate had said must be hers; yet the moment it was 
suggested that the Allies might get into Germany 
and destroy a few of the villages there, the Hun 
threw up his hands and cried for peace. That has 
always been, and always will be, the attitude of the 
bully, the coward and the cur. Might is right when 
he inflicts his might upon the other fellow; it is all 
wrong when the other fellow turns. With dripping 
hands the Germans have shouted "Kamerad!" to 
the world. 

One of the saddest sights I saw in France were 
the graves of the unknown English dead, in some 
localities as thick as the peonies along a garden 
walk. The little white crosses bore some such in- 
scription as this : 

FOR AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER 

Who Gave His Life for England 

R. I. P. 

105 



106 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

No name — no date. One took off his hat in the 
wind and rain for such brave lads, and prayed that 
they had not died in vain. And oh, there were so 
many of them ! Who can ever say now that England 
had become a decadent nation? Think of all the 
sturdy boys who leaped to her assistance, now lying 
in Flanders, proud to have given their lives in so 
great a cause. 

THE UNKNOWN DEAD 

They loved the English hedgerows, 

And scented English lanes; 
They loved the sunlight on their downs, 

And the soft English rains. 
And now — they sleep in Flanders 

Or where the sad Marne flows, 
A bleak white cross above their heads; 

Their names — ah! no one knows. 

They loved the life of London, 

With lights that gleamed like pearls, 
And theatres and taverns, 

And rosy English girls. 
Their youth was a brief glory 

That sped too swiftly by; 
They left their schools and cricket, 

And rame out here — to die. 

And some were shining poets, 

And some were simple boys 
Who loved the Surrey fields, and all 

Substantial English joys. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH 107 

From Eton and from Oxford, 

From many an English town 
They came to save a world from shame 

And lay their young lives down. 

In some celestial garden * 

Perhaps they sit to-day 
And laugh as they once loved to laugh, 

Play as they used to play. 
'Tis we who weep for young lads gone; 

But they — they are not dead, 
Though simple crosses stand above 

Each brave young English head. 

They loved, and are contented 

On windy wastes to sleep. 
Yet when the English daisies 

Begin to smile and creep, 
Pluck them and take them over 

To many a lonely grave; 
For they loved English flowers, 

These young, and bright, and brave. 

If every lad in London wanted to go to the War, 
so it seemed to me, one day, that every old London 
'bus had been mobilised for service at the Front; for 
they came along our road in droves, hardly recog- 
nisable at first, for they were painted a solemn black, 
and of course the innumerable advertisements had 
been taken down ! They were used for carrying sol- 
diers to the first lines, and some of them had been 
turned into hospital carriages. I found a boy in one 



108 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

of these, smoking the inevitable cigarette, his leg shot 
away. He grinned, though his pain must have been 
excruciating. "I'm from London," he choked out, 
"and I've ridden many a time — in — one of these 
'busses. I used to — take — my girl — to the theatre 
in 'em. Lord! I never thought — I'd be ridin' in 
— one — like this !" Then he fainted. 

Eleanor Franklin Egan has told of the little 
Thames boats that went to do service in Mesopo- 
tamia, finding their own perilous way through many 
troubled waters. Even though the old London 
'busses had to be carried over the Channel by a mere 
boat, they enlisted with no less fine a spirit; and if 
they missed the thrills of Piccadilly Circus for a time, 
they soon entered a far more exciting arena; and 
many of them saved the lives of those same London 
boys that rode on top of them as children ride on 
elephants. 

Beyond Pozieres, where the brave Australians 
fell, and where three wind-blown crosses mark their 
graves on the Butte de Warlencourt, there was an- 
other ruined village, even the name of which I do not 
know. I remember the bitter irony, however, of two 
little signs which leaped up out of the mud. They 
read "To Paradise Road," and "To Love street." 

All around these signs were miles of barbed wire 
— that barbed wire which gets so frightfully on your 
nerves. The time comes when you dream of barbed 
wire, and it runs through your tossing nights as it ran 
through the cruel War, in an endless tangle. I recall 



THE SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH 109 

once seeing a picture of a soldier who had been 
caught in it ; and the horror of his fate remains with 
me. If we keep the U-boat out of all future wars, 
and poisoned gas and dum-dum bullets, let us also 
see that barbed wire is not permitted. Even when 
prisoners are confined behind it, a Frenchman who 
had been a captive in Germany told me, it gets on 
their nerves to such an extent that they almost go 
mad. An ordinary fence, he said, held no such ter- 
rors for him; but he was afflicted with a disease 
which, for want of a better term, he called "captiv- 
itis" whenever he was surrounded by barbed wire. 
I don't wonder. It may be just the thing for ani- 
mals ; but it isn't good for the soul of man. 

But the soldier got used to many things, and 
barbed wire was only one of many unpleasantnesses, 
he would have told you. I used to marvel at the 
patience of all the boys I saw, and at the patience of 
the women who, on lonely crossroads, had come to 
serve them with coffee and cigarettes just behind the 
lines. And crossroads are not nice places to be in 
the war zone. The Germans had a friendly way of 
shelling them every afternoon, since they knew that 
lorries, laden with supplies, drove along them fre- 
quently; and the precision with which the shells could 
be made to fall almost took your breath away. Yet 
I found two American women in a poor little tent 
just beyond the intersection of such a road, utterly 
unmindful of their danger. They lived in dug-outs, 
just as the men did; yet they looked as spick and span 



110 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

as if they were going to tea at the Ritz. Coloured 
boys, as well as white boys, were their guests on the 
particular day I saw them, and impartially they doled 
out their dainties and chatted with their soldier 
friends. 

These women did not mind a shell or two during 
the course of the afternoon. They were too busy 
to pay any attention to them. And a little further 
along, where we were taken to see how our Howitz- 
ers worked — I say "our," although, as a matter of 
fact, they were the English guns — we found that the 
boys who worked the machines were equally unmind- 
ful of return shells. They, too, lived in dug-outs, 
and as I emerged on this particular afternoon, prob- 
ably looking very comical in my trench helmet and 
with my gas-mask clutched to my breast, an English 
sergeant greeted me with, "Just in time for tea, sir !" 
With one hand he was pouring out a cup of the re- 
freshing beverage, while with the other he was point- 
ing to a shell which he wanted his men to send over 
to Fritz. His cakes and biscuits were laid out in a 
neat row on a long board which was supported by 
two old kegs ; and his tin tea-pot was as shiny as the 
best housewife would have liked to see it. Any mo- 
ment he might be in Eternity; but he simply must 
have his tea. And, being English, he wanted to 
share it with some one ; for teatime is hardly a sacra- 
mental time if you spend it entirely alone. 

There we were in an arch of shells, and because 
I was an ignorant civilian, the sergeant offered to 



THE SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH 111 

show me how his gun was fired. I stood as close as 
I dared, and just as the firing was about to take 
place, I suddenly remembered reading somewhere, 
years ago, that it is safest to stand on one's toes and 
open one's mouth at such a moment. 

"Have you any cotton for your ears?" a private 
shouted to me. He might as well have asked me 
if I had a goldfish concealed about my person. Of 
course I hadn't any cotton for my ears ; and I wanted 
to know why, if cotton for my ears was so neces- 
sary, some one hadn't told me before the shell had 
been placed in the Howitzer! But some one had 
cotton for my ears, and I had just time to stuff it in, 
when — "Bang!" went the gun, and it seemed as if 
the earth around me rocked with the concussion. 
Here these boys had been, for ten months on a 
stretch, most of them never having had a day off in all 
that time. Yet they were as cheerful as you please, 
though of course they never caught a glimpse of the 
enemy. It must have gotten very tiresome shooting 
their arrow into the air that way all day long, and 
never knowing where it landed. 

We stood around, talking of this, all of us forget- 
ful of the fact that Fritz, knowing the British were at 
tea, would be sure to send his visiting card imme- 
diately. He did. It landed within a few hundred feet 
of where we were standing. It came with a sizzing 
sound that is not pleasant; but our names were not 
written on it, as the Tommy says ; yet I confess that 
I moved away from that particular gun as swiftly as 



112 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

I could, and the perspiration began to fall down my 
face from under my uncomfortably heavy helmet. 
Any one who says he doesn't mind being in a region 
where Howitzer shells fall is not telling the truth. 

As I turned to walk rapidly down the poplar-lined 
road, another shell greeted me, this time a bit closer; 
and, as we had left our motors some distance beyond 
and come the rest of the way in a lorrie, we had to 
travel fast on foot and keep a sharp look-out. To 

add to my happiness, Major M , who hurried 

along at my side, told me that this was the exact 
hour for shelling this particular road, and that pos- 
sibly the airplane above us was a German plane, 
signalling the Boche our location. "If you hear a 
shell coming (of course you'll never see it!) drop 
to the ground, and lie perfectly still." 

But I never heard another shell; and I began to 
wonder if I had been hit and was now walking on 
some road in paradise; for if you're struck you'll 
never know it. Which remark has never cured me 
of my fear of lightning. I have a horror of being 
hit, and not killed outright, and seeing myself a 
paralysed or maimed individual for the rest of my 
days. 

As a matter of fact the plane above us was not a 
Boche machine, but one of our own. The pilot sailed 
serenely above us, oblivious of the fact that the Ger- 
mans opened fire on him. All the shells missed him 
by hundreds of yards, and it is seldom that an avia- 
tor is downed in this way. It's the fight in the air 



THE SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH 113 

with an individual enemy that usually brings him to 
earth. 

In the half-ruined village near this sector, as we 
rode back in the twilight, we could still hear the roar 
of the guns; but it was good to know that we were 
out of danger. I dreaded most, not a bomb that 
would kill us outright, but a gas bomb that might 
torture us hours later. 

In the streets of this village, where we stopped 
for a cup of tea, a few children were playing, too 
young to realise that only a little way off the noise 
of battle was going on, and a war was being waged 
that, when won, would save them, and perhaps their 
children's children, from the necessity of fighting 
for their principles in years to be. 



XII 
AN ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE 

LIKE the gunners beneath their camouflaged 
machines, a General who directs the move- 
ments of his troops never sees the enemy, 
and seldom his own men. He lives the life of an 
ascetic, the loneliest existence possible. No vaca- 
tions for him ! It is all work, day and night. 

We met such a General on the British front. He 
was in an old chateau, and his room was almost as 
bare as a monk's cell. A tiny bed stood in the cor- 
ner, and in a neat row his servant had placed his 
various pairs of boots. There was a table in the 
centre of the room, on which was a pitcher of 
water. The walls were unadorned, save for a huge 
map of the whole of France, decorated with pins of 
various colours. These he moved, from time to time, 
far more slowly than an expert chess-player would 
move a rook. A telephone stood within easy reach 
of the bed, and there were two chairs — only 
two. For four long years this General had lived in 
this room, or one just like it. There seemed precious 
little glory in such an existence. His every waking 
thought was of the War, and the winning of it. In 

114 



AN ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE 115 

his younger days he had been through many cam- 
paigns, or he would not have been here now, with 
his experience and brains to direct the great sector 
of which he was in command. But his eyes never 
saw what I might see when, one stormy sunset, we 
were taken near Cambrai, just before the city fell. 

We happened to be driving along a lonely road, 
and nothing was in sight save the wreck of a Ger- 
man railway car at the foot of a ravine on the left 
of us. To our right there was a bit of swamp land, 
and before us a towering hill with a narrow road 
down one side of it. 

Suddenly, against the angry western sky, from 
behind this high hill came a troop of cavalry — lanc- 
ers, two abreast — four thousand of them. They 
were the relief, and they were going into battle as 
fresh and young as I ever saw any men, on the finest 
steeds and in utter silence. They looked like some- 
thing out of the fifteenth century, and I ached for 
the lost opportunity of an artist. For here was a pic- 
ture that one would see only once in a lifetime, and 
it should have been put imperishably on canvas. 

They were all English boys, and as they came close 
to us, we took off our hats. One young lieutenant 
carried a little white dog in his left arm, next to his 
heart, in his right hand his lance and his reins. As 
he got beside me, I said to him, "I see you're taking 
your mascot into the fray!" 

"You bet!" he cried, smiling. "I wouldn't leave 



116 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

him behind — would I, Haig?" leaning down and 
kissing that fuzzy ball. 

The British were nine days getting Cambrai, after 
some of the grimmest fighting in history. Practically 
every one of those men we saw went down in the ter- 
rible effort ; and I keep wondering if the young Lieu- 
tenant and his dog were saved. I shall never know. 

But they took Cambrai. 

So many faces keep coming back to me. There 
was Pierre, who drove our car for us on the French 
front— a private who had been wounded early in 
the War and now drove for his Captain when he 
went out with people like us. Because France had 
been ravaged by the Hun, even the car we used was 
an old and dilapidated affair, taking hills with an 
effort, but with the French spirit in its sturdy little 
engine. It stalled only once, and then, as luck would 
have it, when a shell dropped near us, on a ridge in 
full view of the Boche. Both Pierre and the ma- 
chine were thoroughly ashamed, but not a bit fright- 
ened; and when the little chauffeur sprang out to 
crank up, he tore the skin from his thumb in his 
excitement and in his effort to get us out of danger. 
The blood gushed out of the wound, and, "That's 
terrible, Pierre !" I said, when he climbed back on the 
seat next to me, and I offered him my handkerchief. 

"C'est la guerre!" he laughed; and I'll never for- 
get his smile. 

And then one remembers the sad face of a Coun- 
tess, who, standing before her ruined chateau, 



AN ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE 117 

greeted us as if we had come up the walk in the days 
when her beautiful house would have had a candle 
lit in every room and a great fire on the hearth. 
French soldiers were now sleeping on the grass out- 
side, weary after a two days' march, many with little 
dogs snuggled in their arms. And a few Boche pris- 
oners were taking away some of the debris. Only a 
chimney was left standing here and there, and marble 
staircases were nothing now but a heap of ruins. 
The German shells had done their work well. The 
tragedy in the eyes of the Countess — I can never for- 
get it; yet she said "Bon jour" to us just as though 
the world were running on smoothly, as though all 
she had had were not lost in the cataclysm of War. 
Patience was written on her countenance, and even 
forgiveness. 

Then, too, I recall a certain gentleman, now mid- 
dle-aged, whose every relative had crossed the red 
frontiers of Death. His chateau was just outside 
Soissons, and as he showed us through the great 
rooms that were left, we saw where the devastating 
Boche had ripped the velvet and leather coverings 
from every chair and sofa, and left rags in place 
of curtains. He was living now in only one room, 
and a devoted servant served us with tea from three 
cups — all that were left; and he brought out his 
precious hoard of sugar, insisting, with a smile, that 
it was for les Americains. All he had was ours. 
How pitifully little it was ! Yet no murmur passed 
his lips. 



118 SHAKING HANDS WITH ENGLAND 

I picked up a Boche helmet on a battlefield one 
day, a plain metal affair, wholly unlike the vainglori- 
ous headgear the Germans flaunted before a sur- 
prised world in 1 9 14. I found one of these in a 
Frenchman's cottage in a tiny village, and side by 
side with mine of September, 191 8, it looked indeed 
strange ; a symbol of that lost arrogance and power 
of the Boche, made of brass and with a pointed spike, 
and in front the double Prussian eagle spreading its 
shining wings. There is nothing on the helmet I 
brought home, save the dent of a bullet, the decora- 
tion which many of them received; but on the 19 14 
casque there was not a scratch. It had been taken 
from a proud prisoner — an officer who had escaped 
all wounds. But wounds have since come to Ger- 
many. Utter defeat is hers, and never in all history 
did a country so richly deserve the fate that has over- 
taken it. 

"They never fought fair !" What a record to go 
down the ages ! And when one thinks of how nobly 
the British and French, the Italians, Belgians and 
Americans played the game, one pities a people who 
allowed themselves to be deluded by a mad war-lord 
now brought low indeed. 

We have beaten the Hun. Let us not slip back to 
complacency and ease, for his propaganda will go 
forth in defeat as well as in victory, spreading its 
lies throughout the world. There are stern days 
yet to be faced ; but with an Anglo-American Alliance 
an accomplished fact, we have little to fear. That 



AN ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE 119 

Alliance must come about. It is up to every Ameri- 
can and every Britisher to see to it, to do his per- 
sonal share in bringing about a closer relation be- 
tween England and America. 

We have shaken hands cordially. Does that mean 
nothing? 

It means everything. It means enduring friend- 
ship, and the safety of the world. 



THE END 



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